THE SOLUTION TO THE FAILED DRUG WAR

WAR AND RACE dominate the presidential campaign, but one
nation-shaping war with profound racial consequences eludes the
political radar: the drug war.

I was a frontline soldier in this self-perpetuating, ineffectual
effort that has swallowed more than a trillion tax dollars and
currently yields nearly 2 million arrests every year for nonviolent
offenses. I helped incarcerate some 1,000 young people as part of this
irredeemably wrongheaded attempt to arrest our way out of our drug
problems. Those arrests will follow them to their graves.

I know they follow me.

But while no other country locks up as large a percentage of its
citizens, the specific impact on minority families has been one step
short of the reinstitution of slavery: from media portrayals of
marijuana-crazed Mexicans, opium-crazed Asians, and cocaine-crazed
blacks, this war has always been about race.

The 1980s produced a jump in the number of cocaine-related stories
focused on minority use, yielding grave concern and a dramatic
increase in the minority prison population. Many people, of course,
assumed that minorities were disproportionately involved in drugs.
Even a seemingly street-wise show like "The Wire," which correctly
abandoned all hope for this war, supported that impression, portraying
virtual swarms of drug-involved blacks.

In fact, according to Federal Household Surveys, whites, blacks, and
Hispanics use drugs in direct proportion to their percentage of the
population. So, for example, blacks, who are 13 percent of our
population, account for 13 percent of our drug use. Yet, according to
US Bureau of Justice Statistics, of convicted defendants, 33 percent
of whites received a prison sentence and 51 percent of
African-Americans received prison sentences. Moreover, the US
Sentencing Commission found that black drug defendants receive
considerably longer average prison terms than do whites for comparable
crimes.

This is not a geographical fluke: a 2007 Justice Policy Institute
study found that in Florida blacks were 75 times more likely to be
stopped and searched for drugs while driving than whites; in 1991,
blacks were 7 percent of St. Paul's population but 62 percent of those
arrested on drug charges; and in Onondaga Country, Syracuse, N.Y.,
black people are currently 99 times more likely to go to prison for
drugs than white people.

There are more black men in US prisons today than there were slaves in
1840, and they are being used for the same purpose; working for
private corporations at 16 to 20 cents an hour. Half the states have
private, for-profit prisons whose lobbyists are demanding longer
mandatory-minimum prison sentences. Indeed, American blacks are
incarcerated at nearly eight times the level of South African blacks
during the height of apartheid.

Inner-city communities are devastated not by drug use but by the same
turf-war street violence that accompanied alcohol prohibition and that
dramatically decreased once that drug was legalized and regulated.
Almost one in seven African-Americans are denied voting rights largely
because of drug arrests, and countless minorities are denied intact
families, college loans, driver's licenses, and jobs because of
selective enforcement of a prohibition that, even fairly enforced,
prevents no one from using drugs.

But things are changing, as resistance grows in precisely those
communities hardest hit by this failed policy.

In 2006, the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators passed a
resolution condemning the failed war on drugs and calling for
treatment rather than incarceration. That resolution was echoed by a
similar resolution passed unanimously by all 225 mayors at their
national conference in 2007. And a national association of black
police officers is expected to officially endorse the call for an end
to drug prohibition.

I represent Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an international
organization of sworn antidrug warriors who know that we must end this
prohibition in order to legalize and regulate all drugs, thus wresting
control from the cartels and street thugs who prey on children.

Ending this prohibition is a singularly potent civil rights issue. It
is a remarkable movement, led by both white and minority law
enforcement officials.

In an election infused with racial overtones, we wonder which
politicians will be brave enough to follow.