HATCH'S METH PLAN

For a man who thinks he has enough to contribute that he has decided to run
for the U.S. presidency, Sen. Orrin Hatch's proposed bill to curb illegal
methamphetamine use and production is remarkably unoriginal and pedestrian.
It is, in fact, beneath his senatorial dignity let alone the product of
someone worthy of consideration for the Oval Office.

Citing the growing popularity of methamphetamine labs in Utah -- the
chemical-based drug is easy and cheap to manufacture and horribly addictive
- -- his proposal basically calls for lavishing more and more money on the
problem, hiring more law enforcement, banning information and tougher
penalties.

All of this has been tried before in conjunction with the nation's
so-called war on drugs. Despite the fact that more money, more laws, more
enforcement, more prisons, and longer sentences have utterly failed in this
30-year endeavor, Utah's senior senator somehow feels this time around
things will be different.

Gee, it sounds like a domestic version of the gradual escalation strategy
the Kennedy administration began and the Johnson and Nixon administrations
employed during the Vietnam conflict. If one cannot get the enemy to cry
uncle, throw more money and resources at him and maybe, just maybe, it will
work.

Hatch's proposal does not address eliminating the profit motive for those
who would manufacture methamphetamines in their rude "laboratories" nor
does it address reducing the demand for this drug by way of available
treatment. This, of course, is why people are willing to take the risks to
make the drug -- to satisfy a voracious demand that Hatch, or other
would-be drug warriors, are loath to even think about, let alone come to
grips with.

Instead, Hatch relies upon tired old strategies that end up doing little to
understand drug use or what it is about society that causes so many to opt
for a chemical means to tune out of it, while perpetuating an endless round
of failure and subsidy of a waxing, coercive bureaucracy.

All this is not to say drug use is an acceptable, alternative lifestyle. On
the contrary, illegal drugs should be controlled. But the current course is
as failed as was the prohibition of alcohol. The alcohol solution would not
work for the current drug problem for a variety of reasons. A true solution
is lacking, and Hatch, unfortunately, really added nothing to the debate.