DARE TO BE STUPID IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

From Milpitas to Mississippi, bad ideas abound THE perfect is the enemy of
the good -- and the friend of the stupid.

The Milpitas Unified school board is considering a plan to sic
drug-sniffing dogs on middle and high school students' jackets, backpacks,
lockers and cars. Surprise drug raids would be allowed to disrupt classes:
Students would be pulled out of classroom so dogs could sniff their
possessions. Everyone would face random searches, not just students under
suspicion of bringing drugs or alcohol to school.

A majority of trustees have come out for the plan, which could be approved
at Tuesday night's meeting. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of drug war, as
Shakespeare's noble Romans might have put it.

Normally, such desperate measures are prompted by a desperate problem, but
there's no drug crisis in Milpitas schools. The district has the lowest
rate of drug incidents in the county, one of the lowest rates in the state.

In the past year, no student has been expelled for drug or alcohol use.

But administrators want perfection. They've pledged drug-free,
alcohol-free, violence-free schools by 2002. To reach that goal, they're
willing to turn all students into suspects, their campuses into
pseudo-prison camps.

At $300 per raid, and 20 searches per school year, the direct cost isn't
high. But almost certainly, Milpitas Unified will face legal bills to
defend the district's right to search students' belongings without cause. A
Sacramento-area school district spent $35,000 to settle a student's lawsuit
before calling off the dogs.

Milpitas Unified could spend its dog-and-lawyer money on a counselor to
work with high-risk children and their parents. Or the district could ask
the police to patrol the park across from the high school, so it's not a
haven for truants and dopers, and leave the good kids alone.

Drug czar Barry McCaffrey announced his plan to cut illegal drug use in
half in 10 years. House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that's not good enough.

Why settle for less than perfection? Let's have a plan to cut drug use by
100 percent. By next week!

The Clinton administration wants to spend $17.1 billion on the drug war
next year, a 6.8 percent increase.

Some money goes for efforts that have proven utterly useless, such as
reducing the supply of drugs at the border or overseas.

The Border Patrol would get more agents. Customs Service would get updated
technology. There may be other reasons to improve the Border Patrol and the
Customs Service, but interdiction won't reduce the supply of drugs enough
to drive up the street price enough to make a difference.

The plan also boosts the Defense budget by $75.4 million for drug
operations in the Caribbean, Mexico and South America. This will have as
much effect as rolling up the dollars and smoking them.

McCaffrey's top priority is keeping kids free of drugs, alcohol or tobacco.

``If boys and girls reach adulthood without using illegal drugs, alcohol or
tobacco, they probably will never develop a chemical-dependency problem,''
the National Drug Strategy Report states.

In other words, the 20 percent of adolescents who are total abstainers
rarely become drug addicts. This is not a very useful insight.

The plan includes annual performance goals leading to the 50 percent
target. But it could easily meet goals like ``pursue a vigorous media
campaign,'' without having any effect on drug use.

The czar pledges to ``provide sound school-based prevention programs.'' So
far, the federal government has funneled most prevention money to the
politically popular DARE program, ignoring studies that show it doesn't
work. It's refused to fund alternatives to just-say-no. ``Sound'' may mean
``sounds good'' rather than ``proven to be effective.'' There's a modest
amount -- $50 million -- to pay for 1,300 counselors at middle schools,
where kids often go astray. That might help, and won't hurt.

McCaffrey's plan allocates $85 million for in-prison rehab. That makes
sense, since so many people are being locked up because of their
addictions. But it will be hard to motivate prisoners to get clean if they
know they won't get out of prison for 20 years because they're serving
absurdly long ``mandatory minimum'' sentences.

McCaffrey admitted that the plans' goals may have to be revised, and warned
there would be no quick results. ``It takes a couple of years of hard work
to start shifting value systems, '' the czar said.

A couple of years? Shifting value systems is the hardest work there is.

Traditional American values like individualism, self-determination,
optimism, tolerance of diverse lifestyles and instant gratification would
have to change, not just ideas about marijuana. In Mississippi, a
legislator proposed last month a ``Smoke a Joint, Lose a Limb'' bill: The
penalty for smoking pot would be amputation of an arm or leg.

In Kansas, 38 legislators want growing marijuana to be punishable by life
without parole. First-degree murderers in Kansas are eligible for parole
after 25 years.

Perfectly stupid.

Joanne Jacobs is a member of the Mercury News editorial board. Her column
appears on Mondays and Thursdays. You may reach her at 750 Ridder Park Dr.,
San Jose, CA 95190, by fax at 408-271-3792, or e-mail to
JJacobs@sjmercury.com .