LOST WAR ON DRUGS

Even when a war is being lost and a reasonable leader decides it is time to
make peace, there are others who will continue to prosecute it, either
because they are too dull to know their cause is doomed or because they are
too vain to admit failure. Such is America's war on drugs.

The drug war and, specifically, the pros and cons of drug legalization, were
the subject of a recent congressional hearing convened by Rep. John L. Mica,
R-Fla. The idea is that those who promote the medicinal use of marijuana or
distribution of sterile syringes to heroin addicts to reduce the spread of
disease are really involved in a stealth campaign to legalize drug use.

Given the nature of the hearings, the most serious failures of the lengthy
war on drugs received short shrift or were not even mentioned.

An account of the hearing in The New York Times pointed out the federal
government spends some $18 billion per year on the drug war. That is tax
money collected from productive people and companies. If not spent on this
cause, it could be used for other purposes or not even collected at all, but
retained by those who earned it.

All this revenue is dedicated to interdicting the marijuana and hard drugs
coveted by 4.1 million addicted Americans, and a portion is used for
propaganda to discourage others from emulating their example. No one pointed
out the foolishness of spending $18 billion a year to chastise 4.1 million
people with little effect. Congress would fare much better -- and save
taxpayers a lot of money -- by bribing each one of these folks with several
thousand dollars a year to quit drugs.

More important than this, however, has been the erosion of the freedoms for
which this nation's founders revolted from English rule, the freedoms they
sought to enshrine in the Constitution. Unlawful searches, abnormal prison
sentences and illicit property seizures are tolerated -- even endorsed -- as
necessary for a war the government is no closer to winning than it was 30
years ago.

The United States never has been engaged in a real war with such disastrous
losses. No foreign power has ever been able to divorce American citizens
from or limit the individual liberties this nation's founders said were
inalienable.

The drug war has created no victors, but has left a plenitude of losers, not
least of whom are the citizenry who have been forced to finance it and have
seen their liberties tweaked to the point that their lives and property can
be stripped from them at the caprice of any government agency if it invokes
the drug war.