IT'S TIME TO END THE WAR 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.

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.

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 accidental 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.

Yet many drug cases are for mere possession. Marijuana, for example,
is less dangerous than alcohol. 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 Great 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.

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's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The
Times.