LET ADAM SMITH BE THE DRUG PUSHER

There is a way to stop Baltimore's murder epidemic. Improve
Baltimore's schools. Revive Baltimore's neighborhoods. And it doesn't
involve more police, higher taxes or longer prison sentences.

Instead, it requires restructuring what is possibly the city's
biggest industry.

Legalize heroin and cocaine sales, and you erase the economic force
behind Baltimore's heartache.

Would it lead to new addicts? Of course. Would it send a bad message
to kids? Yep. Would it cause problems we can't envisage? Probably.
And it would be an enormous improvement.

We've tried everything else. Not only has the war on drugs failed to
stop addiction, it wreaks damage a hundred times worse than the
problem it addresses. Why are voters and politicians still shy about
trying the only thing with a chance of succeeding?

As of yesterday afternoon 254 people had been killed in Baltimore this year.

Any police officer will tell you almost all the deaths were probably
drug-dealer related. The small businesses retailing cocaine and
heroin are financing murder as surely as Legg Mason contributes to United Way.

As former Baltimore policeman Peter Moskos pointed out in The Sun
three years ago, maintaining a private army is essential if your
company can't resolve disputes in the court system the way other
businesses do. Iraq's Shiite militias don't have much on the Bloods
or the North Avenue Boys.

Society needs to apply a force more powerful than a Glock 17 or a
Jessup prison cell: economics. Only by fighting business with
business can we put dealers out of business.

I don't mean letting drug dens spread like McDonald's. Legal dope
must be dispensed by heavily regulated clinics.

But government-sponsored competition will hurt dealers in a way that
the Drug Enforcement Administration can't.

Incumbent merchants have terrible marketing problems, for one thing.
Their street-corner venues are cold and dangerous. Prices are high to
cover the cost of security, lawyers, confiscated inventory and
shipping from Colombia and Afghanistan. Quality is always a question.

Even the government, rarely known for efficiency, would quickly
undercut the drug lords, steal their customers and wipe out their
profits. Addicts would still be here, but without the violence and
contaminated needles.

No single change in policy would lead to so many good outcomes.
Neighbors could take back neighborhoods. Housing values and the tax
base would rise. Arrests and incarceration would plummet.

Billions blown on the drug wars and prisons could be spent instead on
tax cuts and schools - and drug treatment and drug education. With no
narcotics lords as role models, more city kids might pay attention to
schoolwork. With less city violence, more companies might move in to
employ them.

And Baltimore murders, a daily occurrence, might fall to one a week.

But don't legalize drugs just for Baltimore. Do it for American
troops fighting insurgents financed by narcotics. Do it for the
people of Afghanistan, Colombia and Peru, where drug money keeps
outlaw warlords in business and prevents the countries from joining
the developed world. If Baltimore and all its problems were a nation,
you'd get Colombia, where narco-gangsters rule and the United States
has spent more than $2 billion trying in vain to stop the cocaine flow.

Illegal drug money finances bad guys all over the world. Dispensing
legal heroin and cocaine bought through licensed, controlled sources
would strike a bigger blow against terrorism than a lot of what
Washington is doing and at a much cheaper price.

Of course no politician with a chance of getting elected is talking
about this. Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke was ridiculed for
broaching the idea in the 1990s. A. Robert Kaufman, the Socialist
candidate in yesterday's mayoral election, has long supported
legalization. He probably got less than 1 percent of the vote.
Presidential candidates Ron Paul (a libertarian Republican), Mike
Gravel and Dennis Kucinich (Democrats), all skeptical of the war on
drugs, are likely to do about as well.

Yes, legalizing drugs is a drastic step. Of course you're against it.
Got any better ideas? The status quo is ripping the city apart.

We began the war on drugs so Americans wouldn't become addicted.
Well, the addicts are here. The business of selling cocaine and
heroin isn't going anywhere. The only question: Will it be conducted
on the Bloods' terms? Or ours?