WAR ON DRUGS HAS BEEN EXPENSIVE PUBLIC POLICY

We've come a long way from "I didn't inhale," former President
Clinton's rather lame attempt to explain away a marijuana toke.

President Obama has been candid about his use of marijuana and
cocaine as a young man, when he was grappling with his identity. In
his autobiographical "Dreams from My Father," he wrote, "I got high
(to) push questions of who I was out of my mind."

The revelation barely caused a ripple during the campaign.

Maybe America is maturing on the question of what to do about illicit
drug use. When youthful experimentation no longer dooms a career in
politics, it means that people have stopped equating former drug use
with degeneracy. Most adults in our country either have used a
banned drug themselves or know someone who has - someone perfectly
upstanding today. And that will help us move beyond the sensational
and destructive "war on drugs" rhetoric to a place where drugs are
viewed primarily as a public health problem.

For four decades, we have tried to imprison our way out of the drug
mess. And all we have to show for it is a bulging prison population,
decimated urban communities, and real drug wars in places such as
Mexico and Colombia, where the narcotics trade terrorizes the
population and corrupts policing.

That is why our smart new president said on the campaign trail that
the war on drugs "has been an utter failure" and we need a new
paradigm "so that we focus on a public health approach."

President Obama is tapping Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske to be
his new drug czar. He's known as someone who supports research-driven
public policy, but we'll see if that means real change.

There always have been two competing sets of harms relative to the
drug problem. First, there is the damage that a drug user does to
himself. A crack addict generally ruins his life and probably that of
his family; there's no getting around that. But the prohibitionist
approach to drugs carries its own set of harms, which now are priced
beyond our means.

The U.S. currently incarcerates 2.4 million people, and roughly 20
percent of state prisoners and 50 percent of federal prisoners are
doing time for a drug offense. We arrested 775,000 people for
marijuana possession last year alone. The estimated cost of
incarcerating drug offenders is $15 billion annually. Addiction
destroys lives and families, but so does prison, particularly long,
mandatory-minimum sentences for minor offenses that are a direct
consequence of political demagoguery rather than sane policy.

Where would you rather see $25,000 in tax money go - toward sending
someone found with marijuana to prison for a year or providing three
addicts with substance abuse treatment? A Rand Corp. study in 1994
commissioned by the U.S. Army found that $7 in societal costs were
saved for every dollar invested in treatment. Yet as a nation, we
choose to imprison the marijuana possessor time and again. The
priorities are backward and spendthrift.

Meanwhile, drugs of all varieties still are cheap and plentiful. And
the basic economics of drug dealing remain: Take one dealer off the
street, another takes his place. That simply doesn't happen for other
crimes, such as murder, embezzlement or burglary.

In a just-released report, former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and
Mexico say their countries face out-of-control drug violence spawned
by America's prohibitionist approach, and they request point-blank
that we change course to focus on public health and the possible
decriminalization of cannabis.

Kerlikowske comes from a place where medical marijuana is legal and
voters approved a ballot initiative to make marijuana arrests the
lowest priority for law enforcement. And while he has not publicly
approved of these policies, it is hoped he'll bring this Seattle
sensibility to his new assignment.

The war on drugs was an expensive flop by every measure. Now that
we're back in evidence-based reality, it's time we try something that
works.