DRUG WAR HAS FAILED ON EVERY FRONT

The US is thinking about dealing with drug abuse as a medical issue,
says Martha Mendoza

After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost US$1 trillion
($1.5 trillion) and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug
use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.

Even US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't
worked.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske said.
"Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if
anything, magnified, intensified."

President Barack Obama has promised to "reduce drug use and the great
damage it causes" with a new national policy that he says treats drug
use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.

Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on
interdiction and law enforcement to record levels in dollar and
percentage terms; this year, they account for US$10 billion of his
US$15.5 billion drug-control budget.

Kerlikowske, who co-ordinates all federal anti-drug policies, says it
will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric.

"Nothing happens overnight," he said. "We've never worked the drug
problem holistically. We'll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the
addiction."

In 1970, hippies were smoking pot and dropping acid. Soldiers were
coming home from Vietnam hooked on heroin. Embattled President Richard
Nixon seized on a new war he thought he could win.

"Public enemy No 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to
fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out
offensive," he said.

His first drug-fighting budget was US$100 million. Now it's US$15.1
billion, 31 times Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation.

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal
budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, AP tracked
where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly
increased budgets for programmes that did little to stop the flow of
drugs.

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron says the only sure thing
taxpayers get for more spending on police and soldiers is more homicides.

"Current policy is not having an effect on reducing drug use," Miron
said, "but it's costing the public a fortune."

From the beginning, lawmakers debated fiercely whether law enforcement
- - no matter how well funded and well trained - could ever defeat the
drug problem.

Then-Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, who had his doubts, has since watched
his worst fears come to pass.

"Look what happened. It's an ongoing tragedy that has cost us a
trillion dollars. It has loaded our jails and it has destabilised
countries like Mexico and Colombia," he said.

In 1970, proponents said beefed-up law enforcement could effectively
seal the southern US border and stop drugs from coming in.

Since then, the US used patrols, checkpoints, sniffer dogs, cameras,
motion detectors, heat sensors, drone aircraft - and even put up more
than 1600km of steel beam, concrete walls and heavy mesh stretching
from California to Texas.

None of that has stopped the drugs.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy says about 330 tonnes of
cocaine, 20 tonnes of heroin and 110 tonnes of methamphetamine are
sold in the US every year - almost all of it brought in across the
borders. Even more marijuana is sold, but it's hard to know how much
of that is grown domestically, including vast fields run by Mexican
drug cartels in US national parks.

The dealers who are caught have overwhelmed justice systems in the US
and elsewhere. US prosecutors declined to file charges in 7482 drug
cases last year, mostly because they simply didn't have the time.
That's about one out of every four drug cases.

In Mexico, traffickers exploit a broken justice system. Investigators
often fail to collect convincing evidence - and are sometimes
assassinated when they do.

In prison, in the US or Mexico, traffickers continue to operate,
ordering assassinations and arranging distribution of their product
even from solitary confinement in Texas and California. In Mexico,
prisoners can sometimes even buy their way out.

The violence spans Mexico.

In Ciudad Juarez, the epicentre of drug violence in Mexico, 2600
people were killed last year in cartel-related violence, making the
city of one million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, one of
the world's deadliest. Not a single person was prosecuted for homicide
related to organised crime.

And then there's the money.

The US$320 billion annual global drug industry now accounts for 1 per
cent of all commerce on the planet.

A full 10 per cent of Mexico's economy is built on drug proceeds -
US$25 billion smuggled in from the US every year, of which US25c of
each US$100 smuggled is seized at the border.

Thus there's no incentive for the kind of financial reform that could
tame the cartels.

"For every drug dealer you put in jail or kill, there's a line-up to
replace him because the money is just so good," says Walter McCay, who
heads the nonprofit Centre for Professional Police Certification in
Mexico City.

McCay is one of the 13,000 members of Medford, Massachusetts-based Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of cops, judges, prosecutors,
prison wardens and others who want to legalise and regulate all drugs.

A decade ago, no politician who wanted to keep his job would breathe a
word about legalisation, but a consensus is growing across the country
that at least marijuana will someday be regulated and sold like
tobacco and alcohol.

California voters decide in November whether to legalise marijuana and
South Dakota will vote a little earlier on whether to allow medical
uses of marijuana, already permitted in California and 13 other states.

The Obama administration says it won't target marijuana dispensaries
if they comply with state laws.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon says if America wants to fix the
drug problem, it needs to do something about Americans' unquenching
thirst for illegal drugs.

Kerlikowske agrees and Obama has committed to doing just
that.

And yet both countries continue to spend the bulk of their drug
budgets on law enforcement rather than treatment and prevention.

"President Obama's newly released drug war budget is essentially the
same as Bush's, with roughly twice as much money going to the criminal
justice system as to treatment and prevention," said Bill Piper,
director of national affairs for the non-profit Drug Policy Alliance.

"This despite Obama's statements on the campaign trail that drug use
should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue."

Kerlikowske, who wishes people would stop calling it a "war" on drugs,
frequently talks about one of the most valuable tools they've found,
in which doctors screen for drug abuse during routine medical
examinations. That programme would get a mere US$7.2 million under
Obama's budget.

"People will say that's not enough. They'll say the drug budget hasn't
shifted as much as it should have and, granted, I don't disagree with
that," Kerlikowske said.

"We would like to do more in that direction."

Fifteen years ago, when the government began telling doctors to ask
their patients about their drug use during routine medical exams, it
described the programme as one of the most proven ways to intervene
early with would-be addicts.

"Nothing happens overnight," Kerlikowske said.

So why persist with costly programmes that don't work?

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says:
"Look, this is something that is worth fighting for because drug
addiction is about fighting for somebody's life, a young child's life,
a teenager's life, their ability to be a successful and productive
adult.

"If you think about it in those terms ... you realise the stakes are
too high to let go."