DRUG USERS BEGET DRUG SUPPLIERS

We Can't Win The War On Drugs, Doing What We Are Doing.

For four decades, the United States has deployed thousands of drug
agents, sentenced tens of thousands of people to prison, spent
billions of dollars, defoliated thousands of acres on other continents
and subsidized numerous foreign governments, all to make merely a dent
in the heroin, cocaine and marijuana traffic. If we continue to treat
illegal drugs as a law-enforcement problem, we are doomed to another
four decades of abject failure.

The reason is simple. If someone is willing to pay for a product or
service, someone else, regardless of the risk or difficulty, will
provide it. Consumers beget suppliers. Economics 101. The
government can throw people into prison from now until the Second
Coming, and the drug trade will continue.

It is astonishing that Americans, who understand so well the power of
capitalism and the market, fail to grasp the inexorable
demand-and-supply dynamic of the drug trade. Just as a vacuum will be
filled, demand will be satisfied. Where there are willing and eager
buyers, there will be willing and eager sellers.

Since we are stuck with the drug traffic, the question is how to
manage it with a minimum of social damage. The first step is for us
Americans to recognize that it is *our* drug problem, not the problem
of the Latin American and Asian countries that supply much of the
heroin and cocaine we consume. To the extent that we reduce our
demand, we reduce the drug traffic.

One way to reduce demand is to provide free, high-quality drug
treatment to all who want to kick their addiction. I would finance
this by large federal grants to states, which would set up treatment
programs suitable to local circumstances. Such a national program
would be expensive - but no more expensive than the cost the drug
trade already exacts in law enforcement, clogged courts, overcrowded
prisons and ruined lives.

The second step in managing our drug problem is as politically
unlikely as it is desirable: decriminalization. Stop putting people
in jail for using heroin, cocaine and marijuana. We should cease
prosecuting these crimes not because they are victimless but because
we are incapable of stopping them. Most victims of the drug traffic,
drug users themselves, participate willingly in their victimhood.
License the production and sale of the drugs and tax them. Treat them
the same as we do alcohol and tobacco. Decriminalization has the
additional benefit of putting the drug cartels out of business.

And, please, let's stop this stupid and degrading business of
certifying whether Colombia, Mexico and other Latin American countries
are cooperating with us in the fight against drugs. Foreign
governments are mostly willing to jump through our certification hoops
because it means hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid for
them. But the arrogance and self-righteousness of certification
poison our relations with Latin America. Our drug problem is *our*
drug problem. Consumers beget suppliers.

*George Palmer is a technical writer who lives in Dallas*