QUESTIONS FOR THE CHIEF OF THE WAR ON DRUGS

LOS ANGELES - Recently, General Barry McCaffrey, the U.S. drug-policy
chief, was invited to Southern California for a debate. He said all he had
time to do was give a speech and answer a few questions.

My question was: Many people in California feel that the federal government
is closed-minded, even arrogant, in dealing with medical marijuana. The
voters here approved Proposition 215 by a wide margin, allowing sick people
to use marijuana as medicine if it was recommended to them by a doctor, and
similar measures have passed in four other states and the District -of
Columbia. Will you now do what you can to cause the U.S. government to
allow the will of the voters in these states to prevail?

General McCaffrey's answer was, in essence, that since in his mind
marijuana was not a medicine, the voters in all of these states could pound
sand.

The anti-drug chief has now gone back to Washington. But there remain many
other critical questions I want to ask him about the failed U.S. war on drugs:

*Have you considered that the enormous problems in countries like
Afghanistan, Colombia, Mexico and Peru are really not caused by drugs as
such but by drug prohibition? That is, the problems conic directly from the
money obtained from the sale of these drugs. So couldn't we come up with
some way of deprofitizing the drugs? This will probably not have any
adverse effect upon the availability of the dangerous drugs, even to our
children or to people in prison, because under the present policy the drugs
are already fully available. But if money could be taken out of the
equation, U.S. troops and treasures would not need be sent to these
countries to fight unwinnable wars.

*Have you considered that since all neutral studies have shown that
programs of needle exchange for drug-addicted people - which allow a dirty
needle and syringe to be exchanged for a clean one with no money changing
hands and no questions asked do not increase drug usage but do greatly
reduce the transmission of the AIDS virus, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and
other diseases both to the ug users and to their sexual partners and to the
babies of women drug users? Since these programs have been endorsed by
organizations like the American Medical Association, the Centers for
Disease Control, the National Commission on AIDS and the General Accounting
Office, as well as by the secretary of health and human services, will the
U.S. government now finally change laws that make them illegal?

*Do you know what other countries around the world are doing about these
problems? Are you aware that Switzerland, in an effort to reduce the harm
caused by these dangerous drugs, has implemented pilot programs for drug
maintenance in 15 cities? The programs give addicts access to lowcost
pharmaceutical morphine, heroin and methadone, which can be injected under
medical supervision in licensed medical clinics. The programs have been so
successful in reducing crime in the neighborhoods surrounding the clinics
and increasing the health and employment of the clients that more than 70
percent of the Swiss voters opposed an initiative that would have abolished
them. Since reducing crime and increasing general health and employability
of people are good things, why has the United States not established
similar programs?

*Don't you realize that the U.S. war on drugs is not working, and that
prohibitionist policies are significantly adding to the problems in
Southern California, as well as around the country and the world? Don't you
realize, that just because some people talk about changing U.S. policy does
not mean that they condone the use or abuse of these dangerous drugs?

*Finally, since you control a federal budget that has just been increased
from $17.8 billion last year to $19.2 billion this year, is asking people
like you if the United States should continue with the current drug policy
like a person asking a barber if one needs a haircut?

These are some of the questions I would have asked the U.S. spokesman for
the status quo, if only he had had the time.

The writer, a Superior Court judge in Orange County, California,
contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.