CRIME: POLICE CHIEFS HEAR FAILINGS OF U.S. DRUG WAR

Hoover Institution conference discusses drug legalization

Local police chiefs, renowned criminologists and sociologists gathered at
the Hoover Institution last week to hear why America's war on drugs has
been a failure and to discuss new ways to tackle the nation's drug
problemincluding the possibility of legalization.

The conference, convened by Hoover Institution scholar and former San Jose
police chief Joseph McNamara, included input from luminaries such as former
Secretary of State George Shultz, Nobel Prizewinner Milton Friedman and
former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese. The object of the conference,
panelists said, was to promote informed dialogue about alternative drug
policies.

Shultz, who said he was denounced by the White House eight years ago for
floating the idea of drug legalization, told the 100strong audience
Thursday that 8 percent of world trade is drugrelated, and that the only
way to diminish the drug trade is to take the profit out of it by
decriminalizing drugs.

"If you set up a system where the profit is immense, then you're going to
create an industry," he said.

Milton Friedman quoted from a 1972 Newsweek column that he wrote after
President Nixon launched his socalled "war on drugs."

"Prohibition is an attempted cure that makes matters worse for the addict
and for the rest of us," he said.

Not all the panelists at the conference spoke in favor of drug
legalization, but the majority of speakers favored treating drug addiction
as a public health problem, rather than a crime.

Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center in New York, suggested
following successful European models of needle exchange programs and
methadone centers.

"We need a more empathetic drug policy," Nadelmann said. "We need to treat
a junkie like a human being."