SURRENDER WOULD BE A WIN

The War Is Over. We Lost.

The lesson in this defeat should be that war was never the answer, and
we must embrace the inevitable: One day, Americans will be able to buy
a bag of weed or cocaine as easily as they buy a pack of cigarettes.

The United States has spent more than $2.5 trillion fighting the
so-called "war on drugs" over the past 40 years, according to a recent
Time magazine article, yet the number of illicit drug users continues
to rise, and today includes nearly 20 million Americans.

Ninety percent of them get their drug of choice via Mexico, where
9,000 people have lost their lives in just two years to the violence
perpetrated since President Felipe Calderon began to crack down on six
drug cartels - organizations whose very survival depends on the fact
that drugs in America are illegal.

"Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade," said
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during her trip last week to
Mexico. "Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally
smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of
police officers, soldiers and civilians."

I'm sure she didn't mean to, but Mrs. Clinton's "our bad" buttresses
the argument for legalizing drugs. The handwriting is on the wall.
Prohibition against drugs in the U.S. will go the way of prohibition
against alcohol. It's just taking us longer to get there.

Enacted in 1919, Prohibition - the 18th amendment to the Constitution
- - also known as the "noble experiment," was supposed to reduce crime,
corruption, and the number of people in prisons, and keep families
together. It was a failure. Alcohol consumption and crime increased,
jails began bursting at the seams, and families were decimated.

If it sounds familiar, that's because the drug war has had the same
effects.

In 1933, the U.S. repealed Prohibition - through the 21st amendment -
and we've been happily drinking and not so happily paying alcohol
taxes ever since.

A few weeks ago, I used this space to advocate decriminalizing
marijuana. Since then, far more knowledgeable people than me have said
that we should go even further. This movement is hardly new. However,
the voices are getting louder and more varied.

"I actually support the legalization of all drugs," former Seattle
Police Chief Norman Stamper said recently on the radio show Democracy
Now. "There's been more harm done by the drug war than good. So it's a
colossal failure. And the only way to put these cartels out of
business and to restore health and safety to our neighborhoods is to
regulate that commerce as opposed to prohibiting it."

That sounds like a better plan to help Mexico than the one Ms. Clinton
proposed - more money for law enforcement. Already, help is on the way
for some U.S. citizens north of the border.

After 35 years of filling prisons with people convicted of minor drug
offenses, New York state is poised to repeal its ineffective and
oppressive Rockefeller drug laws that at one time were the harshest in
the nation. The reforms remove many of the "mandatory minimum"
sentences imposed for low-level drug crimes, give judges total
authority to divert nonviolent addicts to treatment and expand drug
treatment programs. About 1,600 inmates may be eligible for
resentencing.

Finally, an approach that makes sense.

"If you want to solve any problem you have to come up with a creative
solution," said spiritual teacher and author Deepak Chopra, "not the
metaphors of violence that we use today, like the war on drugs and the
war on AIDS and the war on terrorism."

New York appears to be recognizing the truth of Mr. Chopra's words.
Florida, which has its own set of draconian mandatory minimums, and
other states, should follow its lead, since ultimately, there will be
no need for drug laws at all.