OUR DRUG POLICY IS A SUCCESS

Workplace Tests for Cocaine Show the Lowest Use on Record.

Whatever challenges await him, President-elect Barack Obama will not
have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to keeping a lid on the use
of illegal drugs. Our policy has been a success -- although that
success is one of Washington's best kept secrets.

Reported drug use among eighth, 10th and 12th graders has declined
for six straight years. Teen use of cocaine, marijuana and inhalants
is down significantly, while consumption of methamphetamine and
hallucinogens like LSD and Ecstasy has all but collapsed.

The number of workplace tests that are positive for cocaine is down
sharply, to the lowest levels on record. Even the sudden spike of
meth use -- remember the headlines from just a few years ago? -- has
yielded to a combination of state and federal regulations controlling
meth ingredients. And abroad, crackdowns in Colombia and Mexico have
caused the price of cocaine to roughly double in the past two years.

These results are testament to the efforts and teamwork of men and
women who are virtually unknown to most Americans. They include
people like community organizer Rev. Richard McCain in southeast
Cleveland, who risked his life to drive crack dealers out of his
neighborhood; drug-treatment experts like Dr. Johanna Ferman, who
developed new ways to reach female addicts with young children in the
nation's capital; and principals like Lisa Brady, who instituted a
drug-testing program and watched drug use fall like a rock at her
Flemington, N.J., high school. They include Nashville, Tenn., Judge
Seth Norman, who got tired of seeing the same faces over and over
again and decided to found a drug court, where he coaches defendants
to stay clean and sanctions them when they fail.

Pundits like to break drug policy down into soft and punitive
approaches -- think social worker versus SWAT team. But most
successful drug control interventions are impossible to pigeonhole.
How to describe, for example, a drug-treatment counselor who works
with a police officer and a drug-court judge for the benefit of her
patient? Pundits debate endlessly whose funding should be cut and
whose should grow -- whether money should flow to middle-school
teachers or narcotics detectives -- when the truth is that different
approaches reinforce one another.

Children are the prospective drug users of tomorrow, so the role of
parents and educators in keeping them away from drugs is obvious. But
just as important is the law-enforcement mission of keeping drugs
away from kids, and giving the addicted that first push into a
drug-treatment program.

Overseas seizures make life easier for all. It should be pretty
obvious that when the Coast Guard seizes, as they did last March, a
one-month supply of cocaine destined for the U.S. market from
Colombia, availability on U.S. streets is going to suffer.

Some people believe drugs such as cocaine and heroin should be legal,
sold by the government and regulated like alcohol. Our experience
with alcohol (some 127 million regular drinkers as compared to fewer
than 20 million drug users) suggests this would be a huge mistake. It
is hard to imagine an aspect of American life that would be enriched
by millions of new cocaine, heroin or marijuana users.

The good news in drug policy is that we know what works, and that is
moral seriousness -- an unpopular term that is nevertheless
immediately understandable to any person whose family member or loved
one has struggled with addiction. Cutting through the evasions of a
dependent drug user takes the right blend of confrontation and tough love.

Society conveys the dangers of drugs to young people through the
right mix of parental concern and legal strictures. And driving down
the availability of dangerous drugs requires all the skills of
agencies such as the DEA and local law enforcement. None of these
approaches can work if drugs are simply legal.

Mr. Obama will be called upon for leadership in many areas, including
this one. He will not lack for advice by those who want to take money
from hard-side to soft-side approaches. Hopefully when he makes his
first decisions he will think about Rev. McCain, Judge Norman and Ms.
Brady, and how much less effective their work would be in isolation.