DRUG CRUSADE HAS PRODUCED EVERYTHING BUT SUCCESS

If bloody turf wars, official corruption and unconstitutional searches and
seizures are blessings, we can thank the war on drugs for our good fortune.
This latest incarnation of Prohibition has led to a 20 percent increase in
substance addiction and a maximum 5 percent reduction of supply.

The crusade has produced other marvels:

* A million arrests per year for drug offenses.

* A prison population that exploded from 200,000 in 1966 to 2 million in 1996.

* The incarceration or supervision of one in four African-American men.
Although most drug users are white, blacks are 500 percent more likely to
be arrested.

* Drug forfeitures (with little, certainly not "due," process of law) that
have permitted some small-town police departments to increase their budgets
fivefold.

Molly Ivins provided this last piece of information in her Aug. 20 column.
The rest -- and most of what follows -- is found in Mike Gray's recent
book, `Drug Crazy.'

The war is unwinnable. In Los Angeles this month, some 130,000 steel
containers will be unloaded from cargo ships. Our customs agents will
inspect 400.

The entire annual consumption of cocaine for this country can fit in 13
containers, heroin in one.

Prohibition drives prices to levels so dizzyingly high that bribery --
especially in poor Latin American countries -- is nearly impossible to
deter. Coca leaves that cost $150 generate $15,000 in cocaine on Fort Worth
streets. And heroin is three times more profitable.

The Swiss properly voted Sunday against legalization of hard drugs. But the
movement toward more sensible marijuana policies is gaining momentum. Two
decades ago, a dozen states decided to reduce punishment for marijuana
possession, with no substantial increase in use. Last month, five states
joined California by passing measures permitting medical use of marijuana.

This "soft" drug is the key to more effective policies. As Gray notes,
"Take the reefer out of the equation and the number of illegal drug users
instantly drops from 13 million to 3 million." Some 70 million Americans
have tried the drug, 98 percent of whom graduated to nothing more
intoxicating than gin.

Gray points to several examples of approaches more successful than ours.
Dutch "hash houses" have been tightly controlled. The government allows no
hard drugs, advertising or sales to children. Hard drugs are illegal but
generally tolerated by police, who ignore small amounts of heroin or
cocaine for personal use. But they are tough on drug dealers.

The Chapel Street Clinic near Liverpool, England -- finally, after pressure
from the United States, shut down in 1995 -- featured a heroin maintenance
program. Dr. John Marks took over the facility in 1982 and discovered no
AIDS virus in his needle-users; no drug-related deaths; most patients with
jobs and good health; and substantial reduction in crime among addicts.

The Swiss conducted the first large-scale experiment in prescribing drugs
to serious addicts. Eight hundred volunteers were tracked for three years.
In the final report issued in July 1997, Gray says, "Crime among the addict
population dropped by 60 percent, half the unemployed found jobs, a third
of those on welfare became self-supporting, nobody was homeless . . . . By
the end of the experiment, 83 patients had decided on their own to give up
heroin in favor of abstinence."

Ethan Nadelmann heads the Lindesmith Center, a think tank devoted to this
issue. His simple credo is harm reduction. Make marijuana available to
adults under tight controls. Then institute drug maintenance for the
incorrigible. At all costs, do not allow -- as our current policy of
prohibition encourages -- gangsters to control the market.

If we control drugs and treat addiction as a medical problem, most of the
evils attending prohibition can be diminished.

Don Erler of Hurst is president of General Building Maintenance in Fort Worth.

You can write him at 3201 Airport Freeway, Suite 108, Bedford, TX 76021.