A VIRTUAL BREEZE COMES TO WASHINGTON

One of the real nice things about working at USA TODAY is the view.

From my cube on the 22nd floor of the company's tower in Arlington, Va., I'm
afforded what can only be described as a spectacular panorama of Washington,
D.C.

What I like best is that on a clear day you can almost see the hot air
rising from the various government buildings there.

As you might expect, the bombast, deception and exaggeration of official
Washington get particularly thick when some hot-button issues pop up on the
political agenda, anything from taxes to gun control to Monicagate.

But it seems to me that nothing has caused more sustained government hot air
thanthe so-called drug war. Now thanks to the Internet, a cool breeze may be
moving in.

Let me explain. I personally braved many an anti-drug wind as a reporter for
the paper covering criminal justice issues.

It even seemed fitting that the last story I wrote before becoming online
tech editor here was about our nation's misguided drug policies.

The story, which ran on Nov. 20, 1995, was about the FBI's annual report of
crime across the USA.

What caught my eye were statistics showing that, contrary to drug warriors'
get-tough pronouncements, police were arresting more low-level users and
fewer dealers, while busting as many people for marijuana as for the
hard-core drugs cocaine and heroin combined.

Over the years I saw how billions of dollars were misspent on law
enforcement efforts to battle drugs: thousands of arrests from inner-city
dragnets with military-sounding names, sweeps that turned neighborhoods into
war zones; huge increases in prison populations because of mandatory
sentences that rivaled punishment for rape and homicide, incarcerations that
often only made inmates more crime-prone and violent; extravagant and
largely futile measures to prevent illegal drugs from entering our country,
such as the ill-conceived dirigibles strung on our southern border that
smugglers all-too easily sidestepped.

All the while, insufficient attention was paid to the underlying reasons why
our nation has such a gigantic drug appetite. Or as Barry Krisberg,
president of the National Council of Crime and Delinquency
http://www.nccd.com/, once described it to me, "why so many people in
America want to blot out their existence with drugs."

What we need is increased education and less scare tactics, more treatment
and fewer busts.

But the leaders of America's drug war are, in a sense, addicted to their
get-tough policies. What has been lacking on the national scene to help cure
them is a stronger reform voice.

Until now.

The Internet is starting to level the playing field between drug warrior and
reformer.

''It's an incredible tool for the reform movement,'' says Kevin Zeese of the
group Common Sense for Drug Policy http://csdp.org/factbook/. ''It's been a
way to get people communicating, getting the information flow flowing and
coordinating.''

The Lindesmith Center http://www.lindesmith.org/, for example, promotes what
it calls "harm reduction," an alternative approach to the drug problem that
tries to minimize the adverse effects of both drug use and prohibition.
Another reform site, DrugSense http://www.drugsense.org/, serves as a kind
of clearinghouse for breaking stories and editorial opinion.

Paul Armentano of NORML http://norml.org/, which advocates the legalization
of marijuana, says it's not a matter of drug-reform Web sites preaching to
the converted.

NORML's site gets several thousand visitors each day, and the feedback from
many first-time visitors is quite positive, he says. "Eventually this is
going to cause a very big groundswell for this issue."

In addition to providing news reports and backgrounders on issues such as
the medical use of marijuana, the site also takes advantage of the Web's
interactive capabilities by allowing a visitor to send a free fax to members
of Congress.

David Border of the Drug Reform Coordination Network http://drcnet.org/ says
that federal authorities have historically downplayed studies that
contradict their get-tough approach. As then-President Richard Nixon did in
1972 by ordering limited printings of a report calling for decriminalization
of personal amounts of marijuana, Border says.

Another government technique is to release critical studies late on a
Friday, when little media interest is likely, he says. Because of the
organization's Drug Library http://www.druglibrary.org/, studies now are
widely available to the public.

The internet, says Border, "is changing things in a fundamental way."

Can the Net blow away the anti-drug cloud that hangs over our nation's
capitol?

I'll be watching.

By Sam Vincent Meddis, USA TODAY

On the Web is a weekly column on issues and topics that will help you become
a better informed, more adept Web traveler.

Checked-by: Don Beck