IT'S TIME TO END THE DRUG WAR

Abraham Lincoln once argued that "a prohibition law strikes a blow at the
very principles upon which this country was founded." Yet today's
politicians follow a set of principles that allow them to advocate laws
that, if fully enforced, would imprison tens of millions of Americans for
using drugs.

In the eyes of mainstream America, the drug war still operates under the
pretense that its primary goal is helping our children stay off drugs.
According to this pretense, the kids are supposed to be the potential
victims whom the war seeks to defend. But the instant little John and Mary
pop their first pill or smoke their first joint, they're immediately
transformed by the terms of the war itself into something quite different
from victims: They become our enemies. Our goal then becomes not helping
them, but jailing them.

My brother Billy was a casualty not of drugs but of the drug war. As a boy,
Billy was considered a child prodigy, twice honored by our hometown
newspaper as outstanding high school photographer of the year. Like many
adolescents, though, Billy experimented with drugs, and somewhere along the
way he got hooked

Billy's once-promising future became a downward spiral of temporary highs
and ever-deepening lows. But before my family could figure out how to help
him, Billy was arrested and imprisoned for a nonviolent drug offense.
After finally getting out, he tried as hard as he could to stay away from
drugs. Like countless other victims of dependency, he fell off the wagon.
Unfortunately, this happened just before his parole officer forced him to
take a random drug test. Faced with further imprisonment, Billy chose to
end his life.

The drug war has raged with no end in sight for several generations now;
Billy died over 18 years ago. The war is no closer to achieving its stated
objectives today than it was then - ironically, it's probably further from it.

For example, while the number of federal inmates doing time for nonviolent
drug offenses has risen more than eightfold since 1981, drug abuse among
America's youth remains cyclical at best, and virtually unaffected by
Draconian measures such as the threat of lengthy imprisonment and mandatory
sentencing guidelines. These same trends extend to the state and local
levels, where the number of imprisoned drug offenders has similarly
mushroomed, with no correlating decrease in drug abuse.

Despite this sorry record, the drug war marches on - albeit to the beat of
a different drummer under the Clinton administration. While the
president's efforts to place greater emphasis on "treatment" of chronic
drug abusers should be applauded, his continued adherence to the notion
that youca n somehow help drug users by jailing them is inherently flawed.

First, it ignores the fact that the overwhelming majority of drug users are
"recreational users," taking drugs only on weekends or at the occasional
rock concert. Whatever harmful effect drugs are having on these people's
lives pales in comparison with the devastating effects that years of
incarceration would have.

Moreover, most of these people eventually outgrow drugs on their own.
Otherwise there would now be more than 80 million drug users in America
rather than the current 25 million - including, presumably, both our
presidential front-runners.

Second, the punishment imposed on convicted drug offenders typically has
little or no connection with actually helping the user to stop using drugs.
Not only are drugs readily available in most of our nation's prisons, but
most are swamped by the vast numbers of nonviolent drug offenders currently
serving time.

The time has come to reclaim the moral high ground from the drug warriors.
Then, and only then, will the drug war be exposed for what it truly is: a
failed attempt at social engineering that should have no place in the 21st
century.