REPEAL PROHIBITION ON DRUGS

WASHINGTON - Are we ready to repeat repeal?

Dec. 5 marked the 75th anniversary of America's decision, in 1933, to
re-amend the Constitution and set ourselves free from alcohol
prohibition, a 13-year failed experiment.

So is it time to free ourselves once more from an impractical and
misguided prohibition effort - the ill-starred "war on drugs" of
punitive federal and state laws passed since the 1970s? Yes, argued
two groups - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the Criminal
Justice Policy Foundation - at a press event here last week. They are
urging, instead, legalization and careful public regulation of
mind-altering drugs (www.WeCanDoItAgain.com). The parallels - our
situation today and in 1933 - are intriguing. Americans disobeyed
alcohol prohibition by the millions. Booze even got tied to a
rebellious, adventurous lifestyle appealing to young people. Before
prohibition, New York City had 15,000 saloons; five years into
prohibition, it had about 32,000 speakeasies.

Millions use marijuana Today, surveys show 35 million Americans use
marijuana yearly, and 114 million have in their lifetimes. Addicts to
prohibited drugs, notes Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation, "are famous radio personalities, spouses of major
candidates, corporate America, Hollywood and your neighbors." Under
prohibition, hard liquor - more potent and compact, more profitable to
ship illegally - largely displaced beer and wine. With government
quality controls gone, thousands of Americans were blinded or killed
by "bathtub gin" and its equivalents. Today it is similar: Drug buyers
purchase without knowledge of substances' purity or safety, leading to
many deaths. Then crime. Gangster syndicates were born in the 1920s as
Al Capone and his ilk struggled (and killed) for control of the
alcohol trade. As with drugs now, disputes about quality, delivery or
price weren't resolved in courts but at the point of a gun.

Today's prohibition-triggered terrorism is even worse. Violence and
official corruption have deeply wounded Mexico, Colombia and other
nations with drug rings that feed the U.S. market. This year alone,
4,000 police, prosecutors, journalists, drug cartel members and
innocent bystanders have been slaughtered in Mexico, imperiling the
nation's very stability. Prohibition always imperils civil society. In
the '20s, our courts were clogged with alcohol cases and alarming
corruption of public officials. Today it's the same for drugs,
exacerbated by escalating criminal penalties our lawmakers approve.

Our drug-related arrests are rising yearly - 1.8 million last year.
The nation has been building more than 900 prison beds every two weeks
for about 20 years, the huge costs trumping higher education and other
crucial investments. Our 2.3 million prisoner count is the highest of
any nation on earth. Families are ravaged. Millions of ex-convicts are
treated as social addicts, unable to get work (or in many states, even
vote). Yet many drug cases are for mere possession. Marijuana, for
example, is less dangerous than alcohol (which can trigger violent,
even murderous behavior). But we criminalize it. Aren't skydiving,
swimming, motorcycles, skiing and firearms possession equally if not
more dangerous to users? We do inform people of dangers in those
pastimes, notes Sterling, but we leave the choice to them. So why
shouldn't use of marijuana - which rarely, when legal, harms others -
be different? And for truly addictive drugs such as heroin, why not
work out a safe supply linked to treatment?

Today, advocates of drug prohibition repeal have a new argument -
economic. We are clearly in the worst economic and fiscal crisis since
the Depression. The downturn will inevitably shrink budgets, trigger
layoffs for schools, police, transit, child protection and more.

In the early 1930s, it was the same - economic crisis with
unemployment spreading. Repeal of alcohol prohibition created tens of
thousands of new legal, taxpaying jobs. Repeal of drug prohibition
could do the same now. Legalization saves money In fact, legalizing
drugs would save roughly $44.1 billion yearly in government
prohibition enforcement for arrests, prosecutions, court and
incarceration costs, according to a fresh study by Harvard economist
Jeffrey Miron. About $30 billion of the savings would be made by state
and local governments.

Plus, Miron estimates, legalizing drugs would yield taxes of $32.7
billion, assuming taxation of drugs at rates comparable to those now
levied on alcohol and tobacco.

"We can repeal prohibition to restore the economy and pay for vital
public services. We can do it again," argues Sterling.

Finally, no one expects the new Obama administration to risk its early
momentum on the drug issue - it's clearly too "hot." Yet Obama has
expressed concern about our world-leading incarceration rates, about
burdening youthful drug offenders with lifelong felony records, about
"the devastating impact of the drug trade in the inner cities." And
there's the disturbing statistic: 13 percent of African Americans are
drug users, but blacks are nearly 60 percent of drug offenders in
federal prisons. Could the new administration tap the big Obama
Internet networks for thoughts on drug reform? Who better to start
forming a grass-roots constituency for "the change we need"?

Neal Peirce is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group who
writes about state and local government and federal relations.