PROHIBITION FOLLY

It is 1933. More and more people are calling for repeal of the 18th
Amendment, which imposed Prohibition, because it has caused crime and
corruption.

But Robert H. Silberling, a prosecutor who is a leading enforcer of
Prohibition, disagrees. The critics do not really claim that legalizing
alcohol will solve the problem, he says; they just want to
``surrender.''

``How can anyone concede to an enemy that has ravaged our cities,
debilitated our work force and imperiled our way of life?'' Silberling
asks. ``Efforts among all levels of law enforcement must be
coordinated.''

Actually, Robert Silberling is, today, a special narcotics prosecutor
for New York City. He wrote to The New York Times last week to object
to proposals for ending the drug prohibition policy. I took his letter
and just changed the word ``drug'' to ``alcohol.''

The arguments used today by those who want to continue the failed war
on drugs could in fact have come from the opponents of repeal in 1933:
We must not ``surrender''; we can win if we only coordinate and improve
our law enforcement, and so on. Logically, Silberling and other
believers should be campaigning for return of the 18th Amendment.

Of course, alcohol and drugs are not the same. Alcohol kills 100,000
Americans a year, many times the number who die from drugs. Drinking is
socially acceptable in our culture, and is a far more common way of
altering one's state of feeling.

The telling difference is in how we deal as a society with what
everyone knows can be a dangerous substance, alcohol. From bitter
experience we learned that making its use a crime was unwise. Instead
we try to prevent abuse by regulation - for example, age limits and
rules against public drinking - and by education.

Gradually, those methods have worked. Efforts like those of Mothers
Against Drunk Driving have limited some of the worst effects of
drinking. Drunkenness is still a serious problem, but we know better
than to deal with it by prohibition.

Yet on drugs our society seems unable to learn from experience. We have
tried prohibition as a policy for 80 years, as against a mere 14 before
we gave up the idea of making drinking a crime. But even as judges and
penologists conclude in increasing numbers that the policy is a
disaster, prosecutors and politicians insist that we continue it.

Tobacco is an even more compelling example. That it is addictive is no
longer in question. It kills 425,000 Americans a year. But we have
wisely chosen to deal with it by regulation and education, not
prohibition. And those methods are working.

Over the last 30 years or so Americans have been told a great deal
about the lethal qualities of cigarettes, and they have listened.
Despite enormous propaganda by the tobacco companies, adult smoking has
declined.

The next steps in regulation must be to make the rules against
cigarette sales to minors effective. Those are the steps the tobacco
companies are so mightily resisting, because they want no limits on
their devices to hook young people.

When you think of the relative harm done by tobacco and drugs, it is
amazing that tobacco company executives are treated as respectable
people. They wear suits, and they have fine lawyers, but they do much
more harm than drug peddlers.

The attorney general of Mississippi, Mike Moore, gave that reality
blunt expression last weekend on CBS television's ``60 Minutes.'' It
was a revised version of the program originally held back for fear of a
lawsuit by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.

``I'm used to dealing with cocaine dealers and crack dealers,'' Moore
said. ``And I have never seen damage done like the tobacco company has
done. There's no comparison.''

No one has a perfect solution for the drug problem, but we can deal
with the problem more effectively and at far less cost to our society.
The way to do that is to focus on reducing harm, not on putting
hundreds of thousands of nonviolent people in jail.

Robert H. Silberling and other drug prosecutors are doubtless honorable
and dedicated people. What good they could do for this country if they
would only step back, open their minds and look detachedly at the real
results of their war: a third of young black men caught up in the
criminal justice system, cities devastated, prison-building as our
great construction project. Those are some of the costs of drug
prohibition.