WAR ON DRUGS CALLED A WASTE

Activists say the effort is only causing crime and corruption By R.A. DYER
Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle

Activists in Houston called Monday for an end to the war on drugs -- even
as President Clinton was advocating a global strategy to fight illegal
narcotics during his address to a special session of the United Nations.

"We can teach our children personal responsibility and protect them from
drugs, but we cannot protect them from the crime, violence and corruption
of the black market, or from the abuse of power . . . that occur in the
futile fight against that market," Jerry Epstein, the Drug Policy Forum of
Texas president, said Monday.

Speaking at a news conference to coincide with the United Nations' special
session on drugs, which continues through Wednesday, about a dozen
activists joined Epstein in expressing opposition to the drug war. The
activists represented organizations -- including the American Civil
Liberties Union of Texas and the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws -- that gathered outside the Houston Drug Enforcement
Administration office with picket signs.

Some present favored the decriminalization of narcotics, saying drugs that
now are illegal should instead be regulated and taxed. Others called for a
reduction in the length of drug sentences. But all agreed that existing law
enforcement efforts generally are counter-productive.

G. Alan Robison, Drug Policy Forum of Texas founder, said most politicians,
fearful of appearing to be soft on drugs, won't discuss alternatives to law
enforcement. "Our policies are misguided," said Robison, a professor of
pharmacology at the University of Texas Health Science Center. "We should
stop putting people in prison for using drugs -- that doesn't work. . . .
Ignorance, fear and greed are the three things driving the drug war.
There's vested interests that want to keep this thing going."

During the U.N. General Assembly special session on Monday, Clinton called
for a global strategy to fight illegal drugs and for an end to the debate
over whether consuming or producing countries were more responsible for the
international drug problem. The special session prompted a letter-signing
campaign by the Lindesmith Center, a Washington-based think tank opposed to
drug control policy in the United States. In an open message to U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan that appears to have been signed by hundreds
of global leaders and Nobel Prize laureates, the Lindesmith Center claimed
that "the global war on drugs is now causing more harm that drug abuse
itself."

"In many parts of the world, drug war politics impede public health efforts
to stem the spread of HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases," states
the letter, which bears the signatures of former broadcast journalist
Walter Cronkite, former California Sen. Alan Cranston and San Francisco
Mayor Willie Brown.

"Human rights are violated, environmental assaults perpetrated and prisons
inundated with hundreds of thousands of drug law violators. Scarce
resources better expended on health, education and economic development are
squandered on ever more expensive interdiction efforts. Realistic efforts
to reduce drug-related crime, disease and death are abandoned in favor of
rhetorical proposals to create drug-free societies."

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski