WAR ON DRUGS DISASTROUS FAILURE

Oppressive Fantasies Of Prohibition Create Criminals As Blinded Leadership
Remains Bogged In Inertia

Normally, when a course of action has proven such an overwhelming failure
that it feeds the problem, that approach is dropped in favor of new ideas.

Not so with the war on drugs. This annual, multi-billion dollar debacle
whose prohibition fuels the engine of the black market is curiously
defended at all costs by the agents of inertia.

They'd rather ply the safe side of the political street than embark on
innovative policy requiring leadership.

Increasing numbers of law enforcement veterans and conservative pundits are
questioning the philosophy of criminalizing the personal use of various
drugs. So why do other conservatives worship personal responsibility, yet
insist on the criminalization of private choice?

In a free society, why should the state intrude on a choice of substance we
may deign to use? We know this approach doesn't work and its police state
overtones are unworthy of our notions of basic human freedoms.

Educate by all means -- as has worked in the case of tobacco -- but to
waste scarce crime-fighting resources on such unreachable objectives is
clearly preposterous. When $500 worth of heroin or cocaine at the source is
transformed into $100,000 on the streets of North America, "all the cops,
prisons and executions in the world cannot impede a market with that kind
of tax-free profit margin," writes former Kansas City, Mo. police chief
Joseph McNamara. "It's the illegality that permits the obscene markup,
enriching drug traffickers."

Drugs are here to stay; there's no longer any point in pretending
otherwise. Learning to better manage their use, as has been done with
alcohol, makes more sense than fantasy attempts to prohibit them.

Some of those fantasies have led to oppressive agony for Americans, half of
whose prison population now consists of drug offenders.

Some Americans caught growing larger amounts of marijuana are now
imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives, while violent criminals of
the worst order can easily see a light at the end of their barred tunnel.

Last month in this newspaper, one of the Calgary Police Service's most
wanted was a man sought for possession of marijuana and production of a
controlled substance. Not enough violent criminals to go around, I guess.

More people are killed each year as a result of the war on drugs -- mainly
from the violence inspired by prohibition-inflated dope prices -- than from
overdose. For Vancouver deputy police chief Ken Higgins, the bankruptcy of
laws criminalizing heroin possession in light of that city's AIDS epidemic
are obvious. The need to tackle the opiate curse medically are just as
clear.

"If we wiped the chalkboard clean and said how would we deal with the
situation now, the last thing we'd come up with is the present system,"
Higgins says. Prohibitionists claim decriminalization would create a nation
of addicts, with no basis in historical fact. And after any repeal, drug
potency and purity would be regulated -- reducing the risk of overdose.

These concepts are difficult to embrace, due mainly to the ideological
climate that's been so long entrenched.