HOW DO WE FIGHT THE DRUG WAR?

In New York City and other major cities, the use of crack cocaine has
declined dramatically in the past year or so. Politicians and police
officials have proclaimed a great victory for drug-law enforcement.
Some of the claims might be greatly exaggerated. In New York, the
disappearance of crack from the streets followed a highly publicized
campaign of "no-tolerance" police action against open-air drug
markets. Officers made nearly 900,000 arrests in the last 10 years,
more than any other city in the world, according to the New York
Times. But here's a catch. Other big cities also saw a drop in crack
sales over the same recent period, regardless of the level of drug-law
enforcement efforts and the number of arrests. In Washington, D.C.,
drug arrest rates actually declined during some of the years of the
big boom in crack sales, but from 1990 to 1999 the city still achieved
a bigger drop than New York in the percentage of young people using
cocaine. Law enforcement might have helped.

But for whatever reason, young people all across the country simply
saw the light regarding the terrible effects of crack.

They saw what it did to older kids and they never took up the habit.
Arrest records everywhere show that most crack use today is among
older people, not teen-agers who were so devastated by it a few years
ago. The bad news is that many of these younger prospective users of
crack have simply chosen less potent drugs.

They are being hooked on marijuana and alcohol and, in some cases,
heroin and regular cocaine. This suggests that -- regardless of the
law enforcement efforts -- if there is a demand for illegal drugs, it
will be filled. A current favorite among New York teens, The Times
reports, is the "Forty and Blunt," a 40-ounce malt liquor accompanied
by a hollowed-out, marijuana-stuffed cigar. Groups like Common Sense
for Drug Policy have seized upon these trends to push their case for
greater emphasis on education and treatment instead of more arrests as
the best answer to the drug curse.

Their proposals include public funding for after-school programs for
drug-endangered children; adequate funds for treatment on request by
addicts; greater effort to control HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C, and
alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent, low-level drug
offenders. Despite record seizures, arrests and incarceration, the
organization said in a recent ad, drugs are more available and less
expensive than ever. In 1996, Arizona voters approved a model
probation system that allowed the courts to require treatment and
supervision instead of jail for drug users.

The Arizona Supreme Court said the new approach saved taxpayers $2.6
million last year. The report showed that 77.5 percent of drug
possession probationers tested negative for drug use after the
program. In the Netherlands, education, treatment and controlled-use
programs have long been the preferred answer to the drug problem.
Marijuana use among teen- agers in that country is half the rate of
that seen in the United States. The United States has a 160 percent
higher heroin use level than the Netherlands. But the United States
spends three times as much, per capita, on drug-related law
enforcement.

I, for one, am not ready to take the cops out of the drug war. You can
only wonder how much worse the problem might be without law
enforcement. But it is at best only a partial answer.

Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, head of federal anti-drug programs, had it
about right.

"I don't think we're going to arrest our way out of this," McCaffrey
said. "We've got 1.7 million people behind bars right now."