WRONG ABOUT DRUGS

Manhattan is filled this week with world leaders attending a
well-intentioned but misdirected United Nations conference on drugs.

With drugs more plentiful and cheaper than ever worldwide, the leaders are
mostly extolling failed strategies to combat the problem.

Pino Arlacchi, the Italian who heads the UN Drug Abuse Control and Crime
Prevention Organization, is promising to eliminate coca leaf and opium
poppies, the basis of cocaine and heroin, in 10 years.

Such claims get in the way of effective programs to reduce drug use.

Mr. Arlacchi's proposal which is likely to be approved, would attempt to
cut drug cultivation by bringing roads, schools and other development to
drug areas.

The notion sounds reasonable, and it is surely better to help farmers than
to finance a militarized war on drugs, which has torn apart societies and
built up some of the world's most repressive armies.

But elements of Mr. Arlacchi's plan are unrealistic and harmful.

Half the funding would supposedly come from drug-producing nations
themselves, an unlikely prospect.

He would also make partners out of such abusive and unreliable governments
as the Taleban in Afghanistan and the military in Burma.

While there is a place for crop substitution, law enforcement, interdiction
and other programs to cut drug supply, these steps rarely deliver promised
results.

Where crop substitution has been successful, drug cultivation has simply
moved next door.

The conference has seen a welcome increase in talk about the duties of
drug-consuming countries, but its proposals are still tilted toward
attacking supply.

Studies show that treatment programs are far more cost-effective than
efforts overseas, but it is politcally safer to advocate fighting drugs
abroad than treating addicts at home.

The United Nations kept off the program virtually all the citizens' groups
and experts who wanted to speak.

There is no discussion of some interesting new ideas such as harm
reduction, which focuses on programs like needle exchanges and methadone
that cut the damage drugs do. Like previous UN drug conferences, this one
seems designed primarily to recycle unrealistic pledges and celebrate
dubious programs.