DOUBTS ABOUT 'DRUG WARS'

On the eve of this week's United Nations General Assembly session on drugs,
several thousand judges, religious leaders, police officials and others have
signed a remarkable letter in which they suggest that the "war on drugs''
that nations of the world have pursued over the past several decades has
done more harm than good.

Signed by three American federal judges, a number of big-city mayors
including Baltimore's Kurt Schmoke, the president of Stanford University,
the former prime minister of the Netherlands, former presidents of Bolivia
and Colombia, and Nobel Prize-winning writers, academics and scientists, the
letter argues the United Nations should take a lead in urging nations to
rethink expensive and generally ineffective approaches to fighting drug use.

"We believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug
abuse itself,'' states the letter, which was organized through a project of
financier George Soros' Open Society Institute. "Every decade the U.N.
adopts new international conventions focused largely on criminalization and
punishment. ... U.N. agencies estimate the annual revenue generated by the
illegal drug industry at (more than $600 billion) or roughly 8 percent of
total international trade.

This industry has empowered organized criminals, corrupted governments at
all levels, eroded internal security, stimulated violence and distorted
economic markets and moral values.''

The thousands of signers of the letter do not necessarily agree on a
specific alternative to current approaches.

Rather, they argue that governments should explore alternatives to policies
that place an overwhelming emphasis on criminalization and punishment -- as
opposed to education and treatment.

In Wisconsin, where a prison-building boom is eating up more and more of the
state's revenues, such a reconsideration is long overdue.

The question, of course, is whether this state has leaders with the courage
and the insight to move beyond "drug war'' rhetoric toward more balanced and
effective means of discouraging drug use.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett