WAR HAS ALWAYS HAD PROFITEERS, AND THIS ONE NO DIFFERENT

The War on Drugs and the war on the War on Drugs both employ a great amount
of "conclusive" statistics to make their arguments. They also have teams of
authorities who say that the war must continue despite the cost and lack of
results, or that the answer is to legalize drugs and bring an end to illegal
profits, corruption and a lot of drug-related crime.

One such authority is Dr. Eric Voth, Topeka physician and chairman of the
International Drug Strategy Institute. He says the best U.S. approach is to
reduce the demand for drugs here through education, treatment of drug users
and rigorous law enforcement.

Rigorous law enforcement, if that's what we have now, means we'll go on
putting people in prison, which in turn means we'll always need more
prisons, more people to run them, more officers and courts to fill them, and
more tax money to pay for all of it.

The other side says eliminate the need for all this law enforcement and
those new prisons by legalizing drugs, or at least marijuana, and use the
taxes collected on the regulated sale of drugs for education and treatment
centers, and for fighting violent crime.

The generals in the War on Drugs say using marijuana leads to using heroin.
The opponents say that can't be right, because both sides agree there are 71
million Americans who have used marijuana, but nobody is even suggesting
there are 71 million heroin addicts in the country.

There are a lot of marijuana users in our jails and in state and federal
prisons. Not all of them got there because of violations of drug laws, but
they had a working acquaintance with illegal substances. Recent figures show
that about three-fourths of all inmates in every kind of lockup in the
country had used marijuana, about half had been regular users, and that
close to 20 percent of them had been using it at the time they were
apprehended.

Plenty of them were nailed because of violations of drug laws. In 1997 there
were 601,768 arrests for possession of marijuana, and drug war leaders say
that's as it should be. They point out that marijuana is illegal, dangerous,
addictive and strongly related to crimes of all kinds. The other side says
none of them should have been arrested.

Dr. Voth, in a recent article for The World & I magazine, wrote, "Bashing
our drug policy is a popular activity. The advocates of legalization and
decriminalization repeatedly contend our restrictive drug policy is failing,
in the hope that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"An objective look at the history of drug policy in the United States,
especially in comparison to other countries, demonstrates that indeed our
policies are working. What we also see is the clear presence of a
well-organized and well-financed drug culture lobby that seeks to tear down
restrictive policy and replace it with permissive policies that could
seriously jeopardize our country's viability."

The great majority of readers who responded to my earlier column regarding
demands that the drug war be called off were perhaps less eloquent, but made
their point. It can be summed up in one reader's remark that "arresting
someone for possessing a couple of joints is insane," and in another's
question, "What is it about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that
Dr. Voth and those people don't understand?"

The war goes on. You can read every day about arrests for simple possession
of marijuana, or possession with intent to sell, and you also read of
sentences of four or five years, or more, in prison with no possibility of
parole. There's also pro footballer Bam Morris, facing 40 years for planning
to sell 220 pounds, more than two months per pound, with no time off for
good behavior.

As of June 30, 1999, in the Kansas prison system, out of a total population
for 8,463, there were 90 inmates doing time for possession of hallucinogens,
stimulants and depressants, which include marijuana, 233 more in for sale of
them, and 1,261 more for other drug crimes.

The War on Drugs is expected to cost close to $20 billion this year. That's
a lot of money, and it makes you wonder how many men and women want the war
to continue simply because they have a personal stake in it. There always
has been money to be made during a war, and this one probably is no
different.

What it's about is that some people feel they should be free to grow
marijuana, and then give some of it, or sell some of it, to their friends
and neighbors, just as they do their spare tomatoes. It's the American way.