'DRUG WAR' NEEDS OVERHAUL

So "the war on drugs" rages on. The United Nations recently had a
conference extolling various failed strategies for battling this scourge,
drug czar Barry McCaffrey has announced new initiatives, and the tough
rhetoric continues from the usual politicians.

But much of the drug epidemic will continue until the military rhetoric and
strategies are dropped and government officials and the public come to
accept publicly what many of them must already know privately: Drug abuse
is basically a medical problem, and criminalization of drug use mostly
serves to create a black market in which the biggest winners are the most
vicious criminals - white- collar and otherwise.

So rather than pouring most anti-drug efforts into prevention and
treatment, two-thirds of anti-drug resources in America are devoted to
punishment, which, rather than solving the social and economic problems of
addiction, causes even more problems, such as the high cost of
incarcerating individuals who are sick. (Indeed, many individuals benefit
from the criminalization of drugs, including the companies building and
staffing the prisons holding drug addicts.)

The latest silliness was the June 10-11 U.N. conference in New York, aimed
at formulating ways to battle the global drug trade. The conference came up
with such old ideas as trying to cut drug production in poor nations
(whence comes much of the drugs) by encouraging peasants to plant
alternative crops, or by other (sometimes bizarre) economic-development
schemes, such as financing the construction of factories in drug-crop
areas, and/or by throwing in a rural hospital or two as bait.

This won't have much of an effect because the cultivation of such raw
materials as poppies (for heroin) and coca (for cocaine) is so lucrative
that when it is discouraged in one area, either by generous financing of
alternative crops or by military or police action, it moves next door.

Money is very fungible in today's world, and the profits to be procured
from drugs are very high, to no small extent because of prices being
elevated by America's obsessive campaigns to restrict supply and punish
users and dealers. Cash from the streets gets pumped quickly into the
world's banking system and moved in and out of dummy corporations.

Indeed, there are entire jurisdictions - Panama, the Bahamas, the Cayman
Islands, and so on - that have become conduits for drug money. And the
money they handle swiftly makes it into the coffers of numerous legitimate
businesses in the United States and other Western nations. Everyone along
the line benefits richly from the continuation of the war on drugs.

No government has shown itself willing to take on the international
bankers, lawyers, accountants and others who keep the worldwide drug-
money-laundering industry well-oiled.

And it is difficult to see how effective over the long-run media campaigns
against the use of illegal drugs could be in an America whose ads are
constantly touting the benefits of psychotropic drugs, be they alcohol,
coffee or Prozac. Everything in our "feel better fast" culture works toward
encouraging drug use.

No blustering from Gen. McCaffrey, or U.N. meetings, would do nearly as
much to diminish the worldwide drug industry as would drug
decriminalization in America, far and away the heaviest user nation. When
will a major public figure have the courage to say that?

And when will a major public figure have the courage to tout, for instance,
such reasonable approaches as using methadone in place of incarceration for
addicts of heroin, which is rapidly becoming the most serious drug problem
again?

Methadone is far and away the best available treatment in terms or reducing
illicit heroin use and associated crime, disease and death. As the National
Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine stated: "Methadone maintenance
has been the most rigorously studied modality and has yielded the most
incontrovertibly positive results. . . . Consumption of all illicit drugs,
especially heroin, declines. Crime is reduced, fewer individuals become HIV
positive, and individual functioning is improved." Much too reasonable, I
guess.

"The Drug War" will no longer be "necessary" when heroin and other
currently illegal drugs are made available to addicts on doctors'
prescriptions, while a stepped-up media campaign citing the health risks of
illegal drugs discourages young people from becoming addicts. (But a
caveat: Strident demonizing doesn't work. Not only do people not believe
it, such demonizing can increase the appeal of drugs to young people
through the paradox of glamorization. This is probably happening now with
cigarettes.)

It often seems there is too much money to be made by an unholy alliance of
dealers, bankers and lawyers (and those who make money off the
proliferation of prisons) to hope that such a reasonable policy can be put
into place anytime soon.

But perhaps the people are ahead of the politicians. After all, voters in
1996 in Arizona backed an initiative allowing doctors to prescribe any drug
for legitimate medical purposes, and mandating treatment, not jail, for
those arrested for illegal drug possession. If only the people's leaders
had such common sense.

Robert Whitcomb is editorial-page editor of the Providence (R.I.)
Journal-Bulletin.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski