DUMPING DARE A GOOD START

Dec. 8 - It's only a baby step, the tiniest movement toward rational public
policy. A handful of cities have dared to dump the DARE program.

Like most aspects of the war on drugs, DARE has been a colossal waste of
money. A study commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department found the
program's effectiveness at keeping kids off drugs to be "statistically
insignificant.''

Basically, the war on drugs makes the war on poverty look like a resounding
success. And we all know the war on poverty was our domestic Vietnam.

Since 1971, the U.S. has spent an estimated $1 trillion on the war on drugs.

In that time, illegal drug use has mushroomed and black-market prices have
soared. In this country, commerce in illegal drugs is estimated to be a
$150 billion-a-year industry. The U.N. estimates illegal drugs account for
10 percent of the world's trade - all tax-free.

While marijuana laws are enforced with enthusiasm in the U.S., the
percentage of adolescents using marijuana is twice as high here as in the
Netherlands, where the substance is legal.

Columbia University, meanwhile, determined that education and treatment of
substance abusers is seven times more cost-effective than arrest and
incarceration. Still, among industrialized countries in the world, the U.S.
lags far behind in spending on treatment programs - and way, way ahead in
incarceration.

Instead of paying the annual cost of $2,000 to $5,000 per addict for
outpatient treatment or up to $15,000 for long-term inpatient programs, we
spend $25,000 to $50,000 a year to jail addicts, leaving their complex
medical and psychological problems untreated.

More than 400,000 Americans are in prison on drug charges. Among federal
prisoners, 65 percent are doing time for nonviolent, drug-related
convictions. One in nine American schoolchildren has at least one parent in
prison.

The patently racist drug laws deliver their harshest penalties to
inner-city crack addicts and dealers, while giving much lighter sentences
to the well-heeled snorting cocaine in Beverly Hills and Cherry Hills
Village and Washington, D.C. It takes possession of 500 grams of powdered
cocaine to incur the same mandatory five-year sentence as possession of 5
grams of crack cocaine.

Thanks largely to the U.S. war on drugs, the economies of Colombia, Bolivia
and Peru are so dependent on black-market cocaine trafficking that no
amount of American foreign aid can compensate for the revenues that would
be lost if production were curtailed.

The failures in the war on drugs have been so spectacular and so thoroughly
documented that it's clear the only reason it continues is that Americans
have been brainwashed by self-interested political leaders and the tidal
wave of propaganda, of which DARE represents but a trickle.

If we really cared about protecting our children from the scourge of drug
addiction, we'd demand that the government abandon the war on drugs and
employ some of the cheaper and vastly more effective programs under way in
other countries.

We'd demand that leaders stop wasting our money on ill-conceived prison
programs and spend it giving our kids preparation for the kind of future
that makes wasting their lives on drugs unthinkable.

Checked-by: Richard Lake