DRUG POLICY SHOULD STRESS TREATMENT

MY file labeled "Drugs" contains a 1989 national newsletter headlined: "The
War on Drugs: Is It Time to Surrender?"

I have thought so ever since I heard the black mayor of Baltimore tell
American newspaper editors that something like 75 percent of the young
black males in his city were involved with the courts on drug charges
- -- either under arrest, on probation, on parole, in prison or whatever.

VIPs like George Shultz, former secretary of state, and economist
Milton Friedman also think so.

"Surrender" in this case really could be victory -- a shift of
national policy emphasizing treatment over criminalization.

We have a "victory" of that type over booze. Legal alcohol sales
eliminate the "crime pays" days of Prohibition with mobsters
controlling the supply.

Alcohol remains a problem -- but a more manageable, less demoralizing
one. People still get addicted and can go to jail for offenses
committed "under the influence" but not just for being "under the influence."

How we live with booze suggests how we might live in the future with
drugs -- far from happily, still a social problem, but better and
perhaps less costly -- financially and in human carnage -- than now.

Here in Hawaii, retired University of Hawaii Professor Donald W.
Topping heads the Hawaii Drug Policy Forum, an unofficial group whose
newsletter circulation totals 300.

He is recently back from a national meeting in Washington, D.C., happy
that California voters this year may ratify a state amendment limiting
the penalty for nonviolent, first-time drug offenders to treatment
instead of imprisonment.

A similar measure never got out of committee in the Hawaii Legislature
this year but Topping and his group will keep trying.

Topping has awesome figures on the immensity of our failure to control
drugs. Drugs are more available than ever despite:

Federal anti-drug spending up from $418 million in 1972 to $18 billion
in 1999. A comparable jump in the average monthly family Social
Security check would be from $177 to $30,444.

An imprisonment rate, with drugs a major factor in it, six times that
of any other Western democracy. Up from 750,000 in 1985 to 2 million
now.

Federal prison costs up from $220 million in 1981 to $3.19 billion in
1997.

And what's our payoff?

DRUG supplies now are so large that a gram of pure cocaine that cost
$191 in 1981 was down to $44 in 1998, heroin down from $1,200 a gram
to $318.

Deaths from illegal drugs increased from 7,191 in 1979 to 15,973 in
1997.

New drugs have entered the market, notably "ice" (especially in
Hawaii) and "ecstasy." The only drug with a higher price tag is pot,
probably because its pungent fragrance is easily detected.

All in the name of drug control, we endure increased searches, racial
profiling, assets forfeiture, clogged courts and demands for still
more prisons where each "resident" costs society from $30,000 to
$60,000 a year.

Topping "knows" society will gain by changing the focus of the war on
drugs to legal control (as with booze), treatment as a first resort,
imprisonmentas a last resort.

Foremost should be saving lives, keeping drugs away from children and
keeping people healthy. Switzerland and the Netherlands do it
successfully. We could, too.