The View From New York

WHAT 'PROHIBITION' HAS WROUGHT

NEW YORK - When I read the news that the Latin American Commission on
Drugs and Democracy "blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that
is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point" (Wall
Street Journal, Feb. 12), I thought: Someone is finally talking
sense. I have long regarded the U.S. approach to drugs as
self-righteous, overbearing and destructive.

This is not the first time the U.S. "war on drugs," which President
Richard Nixon started back in 1971, has been pronounced a failure.
Five years ago, for example, none other than President George W.
Bush's "drug czar," John Walters, admitted that the "war" was
failing. Of course, Walters, a hard-nosed conservative, made it clear
that the U.S. had no intention of abandoning it. Today, he insists
that intensified drug-related violence in Mexico - 4,000 people
killed in 2008 alone - is a sign that the U.S. war is succeeding.

There have been more recent judgments. Late last year, Ernest
Zedillo, former president of Mexico, wrote in a Brookings Institution
report that "current U.S. counternarcotics policies are failing by
most objective measures."

Just about the same time, the U.S. General Accountability Office
(GAO), "the investigative arm of Congress," came to a conclusion not
as negative, but not positive, either: The "drug reduction goals" of
Plan Colombia were "not fully met," the report said. Under that plan,
which Bush greatly expanded, the U.S. has given $4.9 billion to
Colombia's military and National Police since 2000, making that
country the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid.

Yet, from 2000 to 2006, even as "opium poppy cultivation and heroin
production declined about 50 percent," the report said, "coca
cultivation and cocaine production levels increased by about 15 and 4
percent." As is often pointed out, coca plants have special dietary
and medicinal roles to play for certain groups of people in Colombia.

The difference this time, it appears, is that the Latin American
Commission, in its brief statement, doesn't beat around the bush. The
three former presidents who head the commission - Zedillo, Fernando
Henrique Cardoso (Brazil) and Cesar Gaviria (Colombia) - call for "a
paradigm shift," telling the U.S. that its policy, particularly as it
affects their countries, is wholly misguided.

"Prohibitionist policies," they state, "have not yielded the expected
results." Instead, "the eradication of production," "the disruption
of drug flows" and "the criminalization of consumption" are wreaking
human and social havoc that is "growing worse by the day."

The word "prohibition" immediately brings to mind "The Noble
Experiment": the ban on "the manufacture, sale or transportation of
intoxicating liquors" that was enacted as a U.S. constitutional
amendment in 1919 and turned this country into a gangland. The
prohibition this time has created far more destructive organized
crime. It deploys the military, not just heavily armed police. In the
present prohibition, the United States is waging a proxy war in
foreign lands against its own domestic problem, destroying a great
many people in the process.

"U.S.-funded helicopters have provided the air mobility needed to
rapidly move Colombian counternarcotics and counterinsurgency
forces," observes the GAO report. Note "counterinsurgency forces." It
was prepared for U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, now vice president.

"U.S. advisers, training, equipment, and intelligence assistance have
also helped professionalize Colombia's military and police forces,"
Jess Ford, who put together the report, notes in an insouciant tone
that is possible only to someone who knows his country can lord it
over the world.

Remember how Americans cheerfully supported Bush when he went to war
with a country that hadn't even attacked their country? How rampant
the talk of attacking Iran, yet another country that hasn't done much
harm to America?

With equal insouciance, Ford talks about "a number of achievements,"
which include "the aerial and manual eradication of hundreds of
thousands of hectares of coca, the seizure of tons of cocaine, and
the capture or killing of a number of illegal armed group leaders and
thousands of combatants." Aerial eradication. Did Ford pause for a
moment to think about Agent Orange, the herbicide warfare in Vietnam?

For a paradigm shift, the Latin American Commission urges that "the
association of drugs with crime" be dropped. That is, decriminalize
drugs and drug use. As important, switch the focus from eradicating
production to reducing consumption, the commission argues. Drug
decriminalization is one thing a number of U.S. organizations have
advocated, among them Law Enforcement against Prohibition, a group of
police officers and judges opposed to the four-decade-old U.S. "war on drugs."

Among the reports urging eradication of at least one type of "drug"
from illegality is one prepared by Jeffrey Miron. In "The Budgetary
Implications of Marijuana Prohibition in the United States," Miron, a
visiting professor at Harvard, proposes treating marijuana like any
of the alcoholic beverages and taxing it. More than 500 economists
have endorsed his idea. The Latin American Commission is exasperated
that the U.S. treats marijuana, or cannabis, as "a drug."

When it comes to reducing consumption, the U.S. puts the horse before
the cart. Why punish the producer and seller, and not the buyer and
user? Where there is no demand, there should be no supply. Attempts
to regulate production and sale of guns consistently fail in this
country. Why force that approach on drugs?

Yes, the U.S. makes "drug arrests." The number, steadily increasing,
reached 1.89 million in 2006, the FBI reports. Apparently, large
proportions of those arrested are not jailed, and that's good. But
the number of those jailed is still large. Drug violators are
estimated to account for a quarter of the 2.3 million in prison in 2007.

One odd aspect of this is that four-fifths of those imprisoned drug
violators are for possession, not for use. Does that explain why
musicians, writers and movie stars talk about their drug use in books
and TV shows openly, with impunity?