THE DRUG WAR BACKFIRES

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.