'DRUG WAR' STILL JUST A HUFF AND A PUFF

Yes, I inhaled. But, as I'm supposed to add, it was part of a pattern of
youthful experimentation that I have since regretted every day of my life.

There is something resembling a Stalinist show trial about these public
confessions. But this remains an obligatory exercise for all baby boomers
who aspire to public office or, in my case, merely want to write a column
about the incoherence of America's never-ending war on drugs.

Bill Clinton, our peripatetic look-busy president, was at the United
Nations Monday to add his voice to the vaporous platitudes of the General
Assembly's drug summit. Typical of the unworldly rhetoric of this
international gabfest was the Pollyanna pledge by Pino Arlacchi, the United
Nations' drug czar, to rid the world of all coca leaf and opium poppy crops
in 10 years.

The president's own oratory was a bewildering collection of semiunrelated
declarative sentences. His words are worth parsing because they illustrate
the contradictions at the heart of the drug war. "Today we come here to say
no nation is so large and powerful that it can conquer drugs alone,"
Clinton declared. "None is too small to make a difference." Yeah, as
Luxembourg goes, so goes the global struggle against drug addiction.

In typical fashion, Clinton took pains to assure the world how much better
things have gotten on his watch. "Overall," the president said, "cocaine
use has dropped 70% since 1985. The crack epidemic has begun to recede.
Last year, our Coast Guard seized more than 100,000 pounds of cocaine."

These sentences, jumbled together, imply a causal connection between
cocaine seizures and the welcome lessening of the crack epidemic. Yet there
is no evidence that anyone gave up the drug because the street price soared
into the stratosphere. The Drug Enforcement Agency's own figures show that
cocaine prices have remained level in a low-inflation environment.

This is the inherent fallacy in the federal government's obsession with
interdicting drug supplies. A true shortage would drive up prices and force
addicts to commit more crimes to maintain their habits. But cocaine and
most other illicit drugs are easy to smuggle across our porous borders,
which is why every overpublicized drug seizure ends up having scant effect
on the law of supply and demand that dictates street prices.

Even as the president lamented nations "pointing fingers" over
responsibility for the global drug trade, Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo
had a bone to pick with his good neighbor to the North. Zedillo was irked
because he had just learned of a three-year U.S. sting operation on Mexican
soil called "Operation Casablanca."

Aggressive interdiction efforts abroad like this invariably ensnare America
in the domestic politics of drug-exporting nations. A recent New York Times
story revealed that anti-drug assistance to Colombia was frequently being
used by the local military in an unrelated struggle against guerrilla
insurgents. Once, anti-communism heedlessly propelled us into civil wars in
Latin America; now we are again headed into the danger zone because of our
law enforcement efforts against the drug trade.

At the United Nations, Clinton unveiled his latest strategic breakthrough:
a $2 billion ad campaign against drugs. When it comes to knotty social
problems, the administration's motto seems to be "Let Madison Avenue handle
it." This same approach is reflected in the anti-smoking commercials that
would be required by the tobacco bill now on the floor of the Senate. The
president may decry Big Government, but he believes in Big TV.

With drugs, as with most social issues, Clinton is animated by the need to
defuse political attacks from the Republican right. That's why roughly
two-thirds of the proposed $17 billion federal drug-control effort goes to
flawed law enforcement strategies rather than treatment programs.

What troubles me is the way the drug policy debate revolves around such
stale remedies as mandatory prison sentences and just-say-no campaigns. I
am not preaching decriminalization so much as I am pumping for some
original thinking.

A small step in that direction came Monday when a blue-ribbon roster of
international leaders signed a newspaper ad declaring that "the global war
on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." Among the
American signers were two brave public officials, Baltimore Mayor Kurt
Schmoke and the irrepressible Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco. But
the names that stood out were emeritus establishment figures like Robert
Strauss and Lloyd Cutler. Only now, at an age safely beyond ambition, are
they free to dissent from the anti-drug orthodoxy.

Walter Shapiro's column appears Wednesdays and Fridays.

Checked-by: Richard Lake