DRUG WAR'S STUPEFYING EFFECTS

In 1993, Tonya Drake mailed a sealed overnight envelope given to her
by a ``friend from the neighborhood.''

Tonya had some clue what was in there - you don't often get a C- note
for mailing wedding announcements. But she was a working-class mother
of four who needed the money, and didn't count on getting caught with
crack.

Ten years mandatory minimum. That's what Tonya got in a California
court.

The judge said: ``This woman doesn't belong in prison for 10 years for
what I understand she did. That's just crazy, but there's nothing I
can do about it.''

Nevertheless, until 2003, Tonya remains imprisoned 400 miles away from
her children, now supported by Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(a.k.a. us).

So it goes with this country's war on drugs.

You might imagine the politicos at last Wednesday's congressional
hearing on ``The Pros and Cons of Drug Legalization, Decriminalization
and Harm Reduction'' might be concerned about Tonya and others like
her - or at least the tax burden they cause.

Nope. All anybody cared for was the growing momentum to legalize pot.
They should have called the hearing ``Medical Marijuana Madness.''

``We're getting rolled in the public arena by very clever people,''
said retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, White House director of drug
control policy. ``I want [drug policy reformers] to come out and say
what they believe and be subject to cross-examination.''

U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., took the ball and ran with it, saying
advocacy groups should be prosecuted under racketeering (RICO) laws.

Echoes of the McCarthy hearings! It might have been scary, had the
speakers not sounded so silly.

McCaffrey felt the need to state for the record that Americans don't
want their children on heroin and their truck drivers tripping out on
acid and crystal meth. So all you drug reform advocates who, in
McCaffrey's words, ``want drugs made widely available, in chewing gums
and sodas, over the Internet and at the corner store,'' had better
watch your keisters.

Lies and half-truths - that's how Yale law Professor Steven Duke described
many of the ``facts'' presented at the hearing. Duke is author of
``America's Longest War: Rethinking Our Tragic Crusade Against Drugs.''

For example, while it is true that spending on illegal drugs dropped
37 percent between 1988 and 1995, prices dropped correspondingly
because of an oversupply due mostly to America's failure to interdict
drugs.

``McCaffrey says the Netherlands has seen increased crime and drug
abuse? The Netherlands has lower drug consumption and crime rates than
America by far,'' notes Duke.

McCaffrey also cited a National Transportation Safety Board study of
182 fatal truck accidents that showed stimulants and marijuana were
present in more cases than alcohol. They needed a study to figure that
one out?

Meanwhile, every major review of car accidents and violent crime
reveals alcohol as the single most common co-factor.

Our current means for getting tough on drugs are tough on everyone
except politicians, who score cheap, easy points off an ill-informed
public.

That's why Congress takes such pains to keep us that way, reducing an
opportunity to improve drug policy into Wrestlemania: The Drug Czar of the
U.S. of A. vs. the ACLU (Anarchist Crackpot Licentious Un-Americans).

It stinks of an $18 billion a year setup, which is what the war costs
us each year.

Between 1985 and 1995, the ranks of the incarcerated have increased
from a few hundred thousand to more than 1.7 million. Eighty-five
percent of that increase was drug convictions, the bulk of them
nonviolent, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

And many of them are children. Between 1992 and 1995, more than 40
states changed laws to make it easier to try juveniles in adult court.
In most states they can now be tried as adults even for nonviolent
crimes, and some states have mandatory minimums.

Is this what we want? Kids locked up in adult facilities where they
are eight times more likely to commit suicide, five times more likely
to be sexually assaulted, and twice as likely to be assaulted by staff?

Judges need no convincing. At least 100 at the federal level publicly
favor changes in the drug laws - including some measure of
decriminalization. They include federal Judge Scott Wright of
Missouri, Superior Court Judge James Gray of California, Senior New
York State Appellate Judge Judith Kaye and New York Federal District
Court Judge Robert Sweet, who has initiated his own petition campaign!

So don't let your Congress people tell you that there is no middle
ground between locking the Tonyas of this land away from their kids,
and sticking crack in their candy.

According to law Professor Duke, most heroin and coke addicts willing
to register in English and Swiss pilot programs in order to get their
drugs for free were able to return to work, take care of their
families and lead relatively normal lives.

I was stunned to learn that about half of all federal drug arrests are
for marijuana, and more than 80 percent for simple possession.

You eliminate the 60,000 pot smokers who are in jail in any given
year, you save taxpayers $1.2 billion. Add what you could save by
eliminating 500,000 pot cases that clog up the courts each year.

Who knows how much money that would be?

Or how many people we could save from drugs if we diverted that money
into treatment?

Instead of war on drugs, peace for drug users and us
all.

Why is that a radical concept?