TRUCE NEEDED IN DRUG WAR

Today, Feb. 15, America's prisons are expected to reach a population of 2
million inmates. Vigils and protests are planned in more than 30 cities to
mark this miserable milestone.

Although violent crime has steadily dropped, our prison population has
nearly tripled in 15 years. The reason for the skyrocketing figure is
simple: the war on drugs.

According to an FBI report, nationally more than 680,000 marijuana arrests
were made in 1998, exceeding the total arrests for murder, rape, robbery
and aggravated assault combined. Eighty-eight percent of the pot busts were
for possession only.

This monumental waste of lives, money and the judicial system itself is
gaining steam due to our pig-headed politicians. President Clinton has
viciously cracked down on medical use of marijuana after several states
passed citizen initiatives to allow cannabis use by people suffering from
AIDS, cancer and other diseases.

Clinton's repressive tactics extend past our borders to U.S. support of the
Mexican government, heavily corrupted by drug lords, and also U.S. military
aid to Colombia. The Colombian army is notorious for human-rights abuses in
its drug war -- really a 40-year civil war -- with abundant murder and
mayhem on all sides.

One of the largest demonstrations in world history took place in Colombia
last October when more than 10 million people turned out to call for peace.

But peace won't be achieved anywhere until we quit persecuting people for
pursuing pleasure. The politicians piously proclaim they're protecting our
kids while they merrily mangle our constitutional rights against
unreasonable search and seizure. And it hasn't worked.

Teens' rate of drug use is about the same as it has been for decades,
despite drug education programs such as DARE, which lecture rather than
engage the kids, and lose credibility by lumping marijuana with hard drugs.

We Americans love our drugs and always have. A century ago there were
plenty of drug addicts, hooked to similar narcotics we see today. But we
didn't have the government protecting us from ourselves.

Back then, drug addicts held jobs and lived somewhat normal lives since
their drugs were affordable and administered orally. It's comparable to
those hooked on tobacco or prescription drugs today. With the advent of
drug laws, dope became much more expensive, necessitating the efficiency of
injection and a life of crime for addicts.

Of course, the key comparison is to alcohol. After 14 years of Prohibition,
our leaders saw that this curtailment of personal freedom was useless and
had only succeeded in bolstering organized crime.

Now, after many decades of drug prohibition, our leaders refuse to see that
we're stuck in the same quagmire with drugs.

The Eisenhower Foundation, a nonprofit research group, recently found that
wrong policy choices have contributed to our continuing violence. The
foundation cited building prisons, the war on drugs and zero tolerance
toward criminals as examples of misguided policies. Recommended were
longer-term solutions such as early intervention for troubled youth, job
training and drug treatment programs.

Turning us into a nation of screws and cons is bad enough, but it gets
worse when police abuse their power. After massive corruption was revealed
in the Los Angeles Police Department, Joseph McNamara, fellow at Stanford's
Hoover Institute and former Kansas City police chief, was interviewed by
the Drug Reform Coordination Network.

"This is not an LAPD problem, this is a national crisis, and it is directly
reflective of the immense profits available under drug prohibition," said
McNamara. "The pattern is that you get a small group of predatory criminals
with badges and they commit armed robbery, they steal drugs, plant
evidence, commit homicide and so on."

On the positive side, New Mexico's Republican Gov. Gary Johnson has boldly
proposed legalizing drugs. Where drug-reform measures have been brought to
the ballot, they've usually won. But some lawmakers have suppressed or
vetoed the voters' decisions. And the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate has
endlessly stalled confirmation votes on dozens of federal judges for
overburdened courts.

Al Gore and George W. Bush don't offer hope for compassion, despite Gore's
admission of earlier drug use and Bush's admission to earlier alcohol abuse
and allegations of cocaine use. The candidates tell us they're close to
Jesus, but it would be helpful if they had a personal relationship with
justice.

We, the people, need to drill the message into our leaders' thick skulls to
get the government out of our private lives. Until we do, we can expect a
society in turmoil.