STOP THE DRUG WAR NOW, MORE THAN EVER

I want drug kingpins and their low-level stooges to have a really
bad day. I want every wannabe "Scarface" currently slinging dime
bags in a school cafeteria to suddenly discover that the underground
economy isn't working for them anymore.

With apologies to the late reggae singer Peter Tosh, I don't want to
"advertise it" or "criticize it," but I do want to legalize it. And
not just marijuana -- it's time for Americans to have a grown-up
conversation about the so-called "war on drugs" while we still have
some semblance of a Constitution.

Imagine the panic of shady bankers who'll be forced to find other
clients with illicit fortunes to launder once mid-level dealers are
wiped out by legitimate businesses jockeying for a piece of the action.

What would they do if Uncle Sam decided it was now in the country's
best interests to drain the fetid swamp of the underground economy
by legalizing and then slapping a sin tax on narcotics, like we do
every other legal drug from alcohol to cigarettes?

The day we grow up and treat drug addiction like a public health
crisis -- instead of an opportunity to criminalize people and
behavior we find distasteful -- will be the day our democracy takes
a major step forward into political maturity.

Politicians from all regions of the country who push prison
construction as a de facto jobs program would be reduced to tears
once we've finally adopted sensible drug laws. We won't need as many
prison guards once we stop warehousing nonviolent drug offenders in
federally subsidized tombs for decades at a time.

Fortunes based on illicit drug profits would slip from the hands of
cartel bosses faster than what happened to naive investors visiting
Bernie Madoff's office.

Joaquin Guzman will be the last Mexican drug lord to crack Forbes'
list of billionaires if we have the courage to walk away from a
ridiculous drug war that enriches criminals at the expense of society.

Yesterday while writing this very column, a letter from the Drug
Policy Alliance arrived in the mail. It contained a fundraising
appeal from a longtime supporter: former CBS Evening News anchor
Walter Cronkite. "Uncle Walter," as he was affectionately known by
all who watched him in the pre-Internet, pre-cable news age, was
consistently voted the most trusted man in America during his
tenure. This is an excerpt from his letter (which was first released
in 2006):

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly
broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And
that's the way it is." To me, that encapsulates the newsman's
highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard
for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire -- least
of all in a time of war. I remember. I covered the Vietnam War. I
remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost -- and
the shock when, 20 years after the war ended, former Defense
Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home.
While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still
being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives
of our own citizens. I am speaking of the War on Drugs.

Folks of a certain age will recall that it was Walter Cronkite who
declared the Vietnam War unwinnable after reporting the Tet
Offensive. That was bad news for President Lyndon Johnson. "If I've
lost Cronkite," Mr. Johnson said, "I've lost Middle America."

No journalist working in the business today has anything near the
moral authority Mr. Cronkite wielded at the height of his
popularity. Still, you don't have to be the most revered newsman of
your generation to see the hysteria and disregard for the truth that
the war on drugs engenders.

This war turns otherwise well-meaning people into liars and fuels a
black market that thrives on fear, bloodshed and international
bribery. The drug war is cut from the same cloth as Prohibition. The
same anti-science mentality that fueled that moral panic provides
the discredited logic of America's drug war.

Every day, we see the distorting effects of our shortsighted drug
laws. Our prisons are bulging with people who turned to the
underground economy to satisfy the demand curve and make a fast
buck. More than 2 million people -- the largest incarcerated
population on the planet -- live behind American prison walls
at taxpayer expense.

A healthy percentage of those consigned to our jails and prisons are
nonviolent drug offenders. Don't bother getting mad about AIG
bonuses if you can't muster indignation at this waste of lives and
tax dollars. And that's the way it is, America.