AMERICA'S WAR ON DRUGS OR ITS CITIZENS?

You won't find the latest good news about our war in the foreign-news
section of the paper.

That's because this war is being fought at home. But you won't find it in
the domestic-news section, either.

That's because the media are barely reporting anything outside the talking
points of the presidential candidates. And George W. Bush and Al Gore would
rather talk about drugs they did or didn't take than mention America's
ongoing drug war -- unless to say that we need to get tougher.

Elected officials are usually the last to agree with the little boy crying
out that the emperor wears no clothes -- or, in this case, that the drug
war has been a disaster.

But yesterday's heresies are becoming today's wisdom.

"The most common reaction I get from my colleagues," Rep. Tom Campbell,
R-Stanford, in the vanguard of drug-policy reform, told me, "is 'You're
absolutely right, but, boy, I'm not going to take that risk.' " Rep.
Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., is one who has decided to take the risk. " 'A
fanatic is someone who redoubles his efforts when he's forgotten his
purpose,' " he told me, quoting Santayana. "We need to question
policy-makers' sanity when the purpose -- in this case protecting people's
health -- is forgotten in favor of a fanatical pursuit of the drug war."

"We're on the cusp of this debate bursting wide open," said Ethan
Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, a leading drug-policy
institute. "Drug-policy reform is rapidly emerging as the movement for
political and social justice of the new decade."

An overwhelming majority of Americans now feel that it's time to mobilize
new thinking on our drug problem.

According to a recent Zogby poll, 74 percent favor treatment over prison
for those convicted of possession. And when given the chance to express
their feelings at the ballot box, voters across the country -- the ground
troops on the side of common sense -- have repeatedly shown their support
for reforming drug policy.

In Arizona, voters have twice approved a measure replacing mandatory
incarceration with treatment, while ballot initiatives making marijuana
available for medical use have been passed in California, Oregon,
Washington, Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Maine and Washington, D.C.

Indeed, it is at the state level that the critical mass for bipartisan drug
reform is emerging.

In November, Massachusetts and California ballots will have groundbreaking
initiatives. The Massachusetts initiative requires that any properties
forfeited in drug cases go to education or drug treatment rather than to
police coffers -- a critically important reform if we are to end our
distorted law-enforcement priorities. Meanwhile, in California, the
Substance Abuse and Crime Prevention Act requires that nonviolent drug
offenders be sent to treatment rather than prison the first two times
they're arrested.

Its backers point out that the average cost of maintaining a prison inmate
is $23,406 a year, while the average annual cost of a drug-treatment
program is $4,300.

More evidence of this emerging critical mass comes, surprisingly, from a
growing number of law-enforcement officials and judges.

Although, on second thought, it's not that surprising since these
front-line conscripts have seen the ravages of the war up close:
overflowing prisons, devastated inner-city neighborhoods, the
militarization of our nation's peace officers, ruined lives. "We look back
now at things like judicial enforcement of the fugitive slave laws and
wonder how we could have let that happen," a U.S. District Court judge told
me. "I think many years from now people will look at our current drug laws
that require very long, mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug
offenders and think this is a comparable kind of injustice."

Even tough-on-crime conservatives like Supreme Court Chief Justice William
Rehnquist are rethinking the mandatory minimum sentences fostered by the
drug-war mind-set. Such sentences "impose unduly harsh punishment for
first-time offenders," said Rehnquist, "and have led to an inordinate
increase in the prison population."

Finally, families of those doing time for drugs have begun to organize.
"The loved ones of the drug war's victims shouldn't be ashamed," said Nora
Callahan, who in 1997 founded the November Coalition to give families of
those serving Draconian drug sentences a voice. "The government should be
ashamed because our nation's drug laws are the real culprit." Families
Against Mandatory Minimums, which now has branches in 21 states, was
founded by Julie Stewart after her brother got five years in a federal
prison for possessing three dozen marijuana plants.

College students have opened yet another front in the fight to end the drug
war: battling against an outrageous provision in the 1998 Higher Education
Act that disqualifies young people for federal aid for college if they've
ever been convicted of marijuana possession but not if they've been
convicted of rape, robbery or manslaughter. "It was this bill that got
students active on the drug issue," said Kris Lotlikar, national director
of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. "They resent having their education
dragged into drug-war politics."

"There is a growing acknowledgment," Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., told me,
"that the drug war hasn't worked." Or as Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, put it:
"The war on drugs is a total failure.

It does more harm than good." Campbell, Nadler, Schakowsky and Paul are
still in the minority -- a minority that includes some pretty high-profile
pols, including New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson and Minnesota Gov. Jesse
Ventura. But common sense finally seems to be gaining the edge on
demagoguery and pandering.

The government's war on drugs has become a war on its own citizens.

It's heartening to see more and more people crying out that it's time to
sue for peace.

Huffington can be reached via e-mail at arianna@ariannaonline.com