OFFICIALS, LAWYERS DEBATE 'DRUG WAR'

VAIL -- Denver District Attorney. Bill Ritter and federal prosecutor
Gregory Rhodes on Saturday defended the government's continuing crackdown
on illegal drugs.

In an appearance at the annual Colorado Bar Association convention here,
Ritter said drugs continue to ravage the country, with the annual cost of
illicit drug use accounting to $110 billion.

Rhodes, a former university teacher who is with the U.S. Attorney's Office
in Denver, said that it is a matter of saving lives.

"I'm an absolute realist," said Rhodes, an African-American who once taught
black studies to police officers and Black Panthers at the University of
Nebraska. "We need to find ways to save our children from being killed."

Ritter and Rhodes spoke in reply to claims by various lawyers and law
professors that police and prosecutors are ignoring the Constitution in
their pursuit of the "War on Drugs."

Ritter, however, said that there is really not such a war.

"I think Bill McCaffrey, the country's drug czar, is right," Ritter said.
"McCaffrey said it is crazy to call it a war.

"Drugs are a social issue," Ritter said. "It will never end. We will always
have some abuse and drug use."

On the panel with the prosecutors was Steven Wisotsky, a law professor and
the author of "Beyond the War on Drugs: Overcoming a Failed Public Policy."

Wisotsky contends that in their "short-sighted zeal to create a drug-free
America," political leaders -- state and federal, elected and appointed --
have "acted as though the end justifies the means, repudiating our heritage
of limited government and individual freedoms."

Ritter said that annually there are 225,000 emergency-room admissions
involving cocaine and heroin overdoses.

Rhodes said he could personally attest to the devastation of drugs. He said
about half of the male children he grew up with in Chicago are dying from
their drug addictions. He said they shoot up every day. To support their
habits, they target for robbery people who look like they have money, said
the federal prosecutor.

But defense lawyer David Lane said the collateral damage from the drug
crackdown is enormous.

He said innocent people have been stopped and searched simply because they
fit a profile of what a drug courier is supposed to look like. Other
innocent victims have lost their money because a drug-sniffing dog picks up
the scent of a drug on a roll of bills, Lane added.

"The big killers are governments that are unchecked," Lane said. "I view my
job as government control."