THE DRUG WAR HAS FAILED

Almost 70 years after the failure of Prohibition, the much-trumpeted
"war on drugs," begun more than a decade ago, has itself hugely
misfired. "We have a failed social policy and it has to be
re-evaluated," says Barry R. McCaffrey, the four-star general in
charge of national drug control policy.

The boomerang effect of the failed policy was richly detailed in
recent articles by Timothy Egan of The Times. School systems
deteriorate while tax dollars build new prisons. Municipal police
forces have grown so militarized that drug warrants are served in
armored personnel carriers. Young mothers are imprisoned for years for
simple drug possession. Young black males in California are now five
times as likely to go to prison as to a state university.

The drug war was created in reaction to a wave of urban violence
triggered by crack cocaine that ignited fears that crack addiction
might spread widely. Surveys now show, however, that the use of crack,
by about 600,000 people annually, has not changed in 10 years. Nor has
the general level of illegal drug use.

The best hope for controlling illicit drugs lies in treatment.
Unfortunately, as new prisons have gone up, treatment programs within
them have declined. In their obsession to control drug use by making
war on it, Federal and state legislators have turned the world's
greatest democracy into its largest prison system, where young adults
are warehoused and the opportunity to treat them is wasted.

As General McCaffrey says, "we can't incarcerate our way out of this
problem." But we can, he argues, focus punishment on drug dealers, not
drug users, while beginning to treat the hundreds of thousands of
people in prison with drug problems.