WAR WON'T SOLVE THE DRUG PROBLEM

White House drug policy director Barry McCaffrey [op-ed, June 29] attempts
to bury all drug policy reform underneath a "legalization" epitaph. He
fails, however, to dispose of the need to change course in the war on drugs.
McCaffrey pointed out that three-quarters of the public oppose drug
legalization, but he did not mention that 78 percent regard the current
policy as a failure.

As federal policy has grown to a record $18 billion annual budget, the
movement to reform the policy has gained strength and visibility. Reform is
far broader than legalization -- a policy that would move drugs into a
regulated market with controls on who can buy and where people can use, like
the policy for alcohol. Other ideas span a range of possibilities, including
allowing doctors to prescribe drugs to patients and addicts or removing
criminal penalties for minor drug possession offenses.

McCaffrey is not just against legalization, he is opposed to any policy that
undermines the federal prohibition of drugs, which means any policy that
contracts the volatile black market. Although his position is secure inside
the Beltway, the picture is changing elsewhere in the country.

Since 1996 six states have approved initiatives allowing doctors to
determine whether marijuana can be used as a medicine. (Initiatives appeared
on the ballots in Colorado and the District of Columbia, but the official
counts have been blocked, although exit polls indicate both passed.) The
success of these initiatives has led both houses of Congress to hold
hearings investigating whether the medical marijuana initiatives were
actually fronts for legalization.

Even if a legalization cabal existed behind the initiatives, it is hard to
conceive how it would trick voters into endorsing legalization. The
initiative revolution means that the voters are starting to move ahead of
the federal government, saying that it is possible to go too far in the war
on drugs.

McCaffrey responds with two key assertions: (1) Drugs pose an unacceptable
risk to the health of a user, and (2) drugs cause "a disproportionate
percentage" of crime. While both claims have a kernel of truth, they are
both distortions of reality.

It is true that, in McCaffrey's words, "drugs themselves harm users."
However, McCaffrey is separating cocaine, heroin and marijuana from alcohol
and nicotine, which also pose risks. The separation is a legal fiction, not
a pharmacological distinction. The 1970 Controlled Substances Act, the basis
for today's drug classifications, schedules illegal drugs and medicines but
does not mention alcohol and nicotine. That does not stop legal drugs from
being implicated in nearly half a million deaths per year. A recent study in
the Journal of the American Medical Association found that prescription
drugs, when properly administered, cause more than 100,000 deaths per year.
McCaffrey's office says that illegal drugs are responsible for 14,000 deaths
annually.

In any case, a comparison between legal and illegal drugs is unfair because
street drugs are available only in their most potent forms. Dealers do not
offer coca or opium teas.

McCaffrey also alluded to a causal relationship between illegal drugs and
crime when he wrote that "drug-dependent individuals are responsible for a
disproportionate percentage of . . . violent and income-generating crimes
such as robbery, burglary or theft." McCaffrey adds that "drugs were
criminalized because they are harmful; they are not harmful because they
were criminalized."

Not quite. During the advent of crack cocaine in the latter half of the
1980s, researchers in New York City conducted a unique study. The
researchers defined three types of drug-related homicides: those caused by
the use of drugs, those caused by trying to acquire money to buy drugs and
those caused by drug dealers settling internal disputes and fighting over
turf. In 1988, just over half of the murders in the city were
"drug-related." But once the researchers examined the circumstances of the
murders, they discovered that the clear majority, 74 percent, were results
of the drug trade, not drug use (14 percent) or the need to get money for
drugs (4 percent).

Prohibition's effect on U.S. homicide rates becomes clear when charted over
the course of the century. The high point occurs at the end of alcohol
prohibition in 1933 with 10 homicides per 100,000. After a long decline, the
rates climb back up so that the 1980s hover just under the 1933 peak.

Whether legalizers or not, many reformers believe that U.S. drug policy must
be reexamined as an unlawful expansion of federal power. McCaffrey's entire
argument turns on whether people accept that it is a federal crime to have
unhealthful or "bad" habits. There is a clear, bright line between using a
drug and murdering or robbing. The harm or immorality is built into murder
and robbery, which is not the case for drug use.

Ultimately, Americans must demand an investigation of the harms caused by
our country's longest war. With a third of the country -- 77 million
Americans -- having used an illegal drug at least once, we might discover
that drug policy reform would save more wartime refugees than the liberation
of Kosovo.

The writer is a senior analyst at the Drug Policy Foundation.