IT'S TIME TO RETHINK FUTILE WAR ON DRUGS

In a political world where more and more politicians let their pollsters
tell them what to think, it's refreshing to discover Gov. Gary Johnson of
New Mexico, a man who says what he thinks. Johnson has become one of the
first high-ranking elected officials to question the war on drugs. "I
believe that our war on drugs has been a dismal failure," he told the Taos
Chamber of Commerce. "We are putting more and more money into a war that we
are absolutely losing."

Hard to argue with that. The war isn't working, and we should try something
different - namely, getting the federal government out of the business of
prohibition and letting the states - and adult common sense - decide.

Futile efforts to enforce prohibition have been pursued even more vigorously
in the 1980s and 1990s than they were during alcohol prohibition in the
1920s. Drug enforcement cost about $22 billion in the Reagan years and an
additional $45 billion in the four years of the Bush administration. The
federal government spent $16 billion on drug-control programs in 1998 alone
and plans to spend $18 billion this year. States and local communities spend
even more.

What good has it all done? Well, total drug arrests are now more than 1.5
million a year. There are about 400,000 drug offenders in jails and prisons
now, and over 80 percent of the increase in the federal prison population
from 1985 to 1995 was due to drug convictions. Drug offenders are about 60
percent of all federal prisoners, compared to only 12.4 percent for violent
offenses.

But all the arrests and incarcerations haven't stopped the use and abuse of
drugs, or the drug trade or the crime associated with black-market
transactions. Cocaine and heroin supplies are up; the more our customs
agents interdict, the more smugglers import.

As for discouraging young people from using drugs, the massive federal
effort has largely been a dud. Despite the soaring expenditures on antidrug
efforts, in 1995 about half the students in the United States tried an
illegal drug before they graduated from high school. Every year from 1975 to
1995, at least 82 percent of high school seniors said they found marijuana
"fairly easy" or "very easy" to obtain.

That is why more and more thoughtful people have been questioning the war on
drugs and calling for decriminalization, from Kurt Schmoke, the Democratic
mayor of Baltimore, to George Shultz, who was Ronald Reagan's secretary of
state, to Jesse Ventura, the Reform Party governor of Minnesota.

Let's face it: If spending more than $30 billion a year and arresting 1.5
million people a year isn't stopping drug use and abuse, then we should try
a different strategy. What we should be debating right now is federal
policy, and we should start by remembering that the United States is a
federal republic, in which the 50 states make most of the decisions.

Congress should deal with drug prohibition the way it dealt with alcohol
prohibition. The 21st Amendment did not actually legalize the sale of
alcohol; it simply repealed the federal prohibition and returned to the
states the authority to set alcohol policy. States took the opportunity to
design diverse liquor policies in tune with the preferences of their citizens.

Congress should withdraw from the war on drugs and let the states set their
own policies, just as they already do for alcohol. For their part, the
states should prohibit drug sales to children, just as alcohol sales to
children are prohibited today. Driving under the influence of drugs should
be illegal. But beyond such obvious restrictions, states should be free to
set the drug policies that make sense to them, up to and including sales to
adults by licensed stores, much as alcohol is sold today.

Federal withdrawal from the drug war would restore authority to the states,
as the Founders envisioned. It would save taxpayers' money. And over time it
would allow us to develop an approach to drug use that abandons prohibition
and massive incarceration in favor of a commonsense system in which the
propensity of some people to use drugs is accepted and dealt with sensibly.

Whether or not we eventually adopt such a policy, we should certainly have
an honest debate on the subject. Voters in every state should be glad that
New Mexico has a citizen-governor unafraid to take on tough issues and
challenge the status quo.

David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute, a Washington
think tank.