JUST THINK ABOUT DRUGS; THEN SAY 'NO' TO US POLICY

''We believe the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug
abuse itself.''

Under that banner headline in a double-truck ad of the June 8 New York
Times, an astounding array of prominent and accomplished world citizens
appealed to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for a major shift in
drug-fighting worldwide.

Fully one-twelfth of all international trade involves traffic in illegal
narcotics, it is claimed. And while no one can be sure of the scope of the
drug economy, the number could be right on the button. And it is also
inescapable that governments worldwide routinely fail to contain the
worsening social deterioration that accelerates despite ever-harsher methods.

The criminalization of drug use imprisons many hundreds of thousands,
perhaps millions of sniffers, snorters, swallowers, injectors. As an
inevitable byproduct of the into-your-bloodstream-with-a-rush economy, the
drug trade also corrupts law enforcement, governments, and the judiciary.
Meanwhile, drug suppliers grow fabulously wealthy, and insulate their
criminal conspiracies from punishment. The United Nations estimates that
more than $1 billion a day goes for illegal drugs worldwide, and the $400
billion-per-year estimate seems low to some.

''Every day politicians endorse harsher new drug war strategies,'' said the
letter, coordinated by the Lindesmith Center of New York. But those who
call for alternatives to the current consensus of failed policies ''are
accused of `surrendering,''' and the wasteful spending on searches and
suppression increases as drug use spreads.

The signers of this public petition include some impressive achievers:
Walter Cronkite is nobody's fool. There are ''formers'' such as ex-senators
Claiborne Pell and Alan Cranston, ex-presidential adviser Lloyd Cutler.
ex-US Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, and ex-Attorney General Nicholas
Katzenbach.

There are influential big-city mayors such as Willie Brown of San Francisco
and Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore and San Jose's Susan Hammer. There are
prominent professors from across the continent, an array of academics such
as Harvey Cox, Cornel West, Andrew Weil, Herbert Gans, James Vorenberg,
Mathew Meselson, and Stephen Jay Gould.

There are some big-time Georges, such as philanthropist George Soros and
former US Secretary of State George Shultz, and big-time preachers such as
the Revs. Leon Sullivan, Floyd Flake, and Calvin Butts 3d.

There's Lani Guinier and Lester Grinspoon, the American Civil Liberties
Union's Ira Glasser and the venerable and very conservative economist
Milton Friedman, cheek-by-jowl alongside various CEOs and federal judges
(Denver's John Kane, New York's Robert Sweet and John Curtin,), and Irish
cops such as Patrick Murphy, once police commissioner of New York, and
Joseph McNamara, once top cop in Kansas City.

These serious and accomplished individuals have dared put their names on a
petition for which, if they were running for office in the vast majority of
US jurisdictions, they'd be pilloried. Because in the current political
climate of mindless mimicry of the failed policy of interdiction, of
search-and-destroy, of
lock-up-the-little-guy-while-the-kingpins-live-high-on-the-hog, it can be
hazardous to a politician's health to point out how badly the drug war is
lost.

''We are all deeply concerned,'' says the letter, ''about the threat drugs
pose to our children, our fellow citizens and our societies.'' And the
signers from other countries are more impressive in their scope than the US
signatories.

People who ran governments in the Netherlands, Colombia, Costa Rica,
Nicaragua, writers such as Germany's Gunter Grass and Ivan Illich, Italy's
Nobelist Dario Fo, Canada's Jane Jacobs, signed the petition.

There's a plethora of Nobel laureates, top cops from Jamaica and Scotland
Yard, the lord mayor of Melbourne, the former UN chief, Peru's Javier Perez
de Cuellar, parliamentarians and professors galore, from New Zealand to the
Arctic Circle, and some civil rights campaigners who made the long march in
other causes, such as South Africa's Helen Suzman.

The criminals coining wealth on the backs of drug users get away with more
than murder. The letter points out the obvious: They ''corrupted
governments at all levels, eroded internal security, stimulated violence,
and distorted both economic markets and moral values.''

But there's an additional point: ''These are the consequences not of drug
use per se, but of decades of failed and futile drug war policies. In many
countries, drug war politics impede public health efforts to stem the
spread of AIDS, hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Human rights are
violated, environmental assaults perpetrated and prisons inundated with
hundreds of thousands of drug law violators.''

The letter does not point out that in the United States, there are 1.6
million Americans behind bars, many of them for drug-and-alcohol related
crimes. ''Scarce resources better expended on health, education and
economic development are squandered on ever-more-expensive interdiction
efforts. Realistic proposals to reduce drug-related crime, disease and
death are abandoned in favor of rhetorical proposals to create drug-free
societies.''

Now comes the crusher, endorsed by all these accomplished and intelligent
individuals from across the planet: ''Persisting in our current policies
will only result in more drug abuse, more empowerment of drug markets and
criminals, and more disease and suffering. Too often, those who call for
open debate, rigorous analysis of current policies, and serious
consideration of alternatives are accused of `surrendering.' But the true
surrender is when fear and inertia combine to shut off debate, suppress
critical analysis, and dismiss all alternatives to current policies.''

Sadly, most of the official titles born by the distinguished signatories
are prefaced by the bland ''former.'' Many of them could not have voiced
such sentiments while they held power, because of the pressure of public
opinion, which militates against experimentation, innovation and change.
Can you imagine how swiftly CBS would have dumped Uncle Walter if the
beloved anchorman had opened a broadcast with these views?

Kofi Annan, the world's top bureaucrat, is just a mail drop for this cause.
The effective decriminalization of illegal drugs would take much of the
corrupt money out of the system, and rationalize the treatment of the
addicted, who are among the most forlorn of humans. Real improvement
requires real, and risky, change. Most American politicians cannot summon
the intestinal fortitude to do anything but mouth meaningless platitudes
about ''cracking down'' on what is at bottom a chemical dependency
masquerading as a weakness in human nature. The smugglers, the middlemen,
the mules, the vein-poppers, the snorters, will always stay one step ahead
of the law. We even have out-of-control drug problems in some of our major
prisons. If you cannot interdict narcotics in a maximum security federal
prison, what chance have you on the streets of America? The war is lost.
Demand creates supply. So the demand must be channeled, treated,
controlled; it cannot be simply eradicated by fiat.

Until we make this momentous shift in global public policy, society will
continue to rot from the pernicious, ineradicable spread of illegal drugs.

© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

Checked-by: Richard Lake