THE WAR ON DRUGS IS BOUND TO FAIL WITHOUT CHANGES

SAN ANGELO, Texas -- There was "victory" in Iraq and a pending one in
Afghanistan. Now, we're told, it's time to turn our weapons to the war
on drugs.

The need for an escalation led Army Undersecretary Joseph Westphal to
plant the thought in public discourse that invading Mexico is not out
of the question.

We don't like losing wars. We fight only for the right side because
our intent is for a happy ending. Just consult a history book if
you're in doubt.

Given that, a mistake was made from the beginning with the
misapplication of "war" to the campaign to minimize illicit drug use.
Wars provoke resistance from the other side. We don't like or
understand that.

The Nixon administration gave the war on drugs a law-and-order spin in
the early 1970s. Its concern was with out-of-control youth (mostly in
college), the association of pot smoking with draft-resistance,
hippies, yippies, cultural drift and the Beatles.

Drug use was considered the common denominator with disorder and
threats to the upright, the straight-laced, the moral community and
what made over-the-top youth go bonkers.

A law-enforcement, rehab, talk-and-treatment therapy and a public
relations industry grew up around legitimate concerns over
distribution and illicit drug use. However, the application of drug
laws today tends to serve other social-control purposes.

For example, low-level pot possession is the No. 1 cause of arrest in
New York City, 50,383 cases. Of those, 86 percent of the arrests last
year were of blacks and Latinos despite consistent research showing
young whites use marijuana at higher rates, according to the Drug
Policy Alliance.

In another theater of the war, a November 2008 report from the
Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., co-chaired by Mexico's
former president Ernesto Zedillo, declared the U.S. war on drugs had
failed.

The report called for rethinking the "asymmetrical" U.S. policy that
calls for countries like Mexico to stanch the flow of drugs without
making a successful effort to stop the flow of guns going south and
avoiding the public health issue that large-scale illegal-drug
consumption presents.

The drug fight will fail so long as law enforcement remains the
policy's emphasis. Neglect of the problem of consumption, despite all
the health and brain-science evidence on addiction, shows how
wrong-headed the policy is.

More than two years after the Brookings report, the Inter-American
Dialogue also labels the policy a failure. It challenges the policy
whose purpose is to fight on and spend into oblivion, with seeming
disinterest on whether drug use and distribution is declining. Debate
about the 40-year U.S. war on drugs, said the Dialogue, "remains muted."

Inter-American Dialogue President Emeritus Peter Hakim presented his
case to "drug czar" Gil Kerlikowske. He briefed staff at the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, and discussed the report with assistant
secretary William Brownfield of the Bureau of International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Who was Hakim trying to move? The very people whose careers and
budgets depend on keeping the drug war going.

Have we sat and watched this scenario before? Try public education,
where bad results get more money, which produces more bad results.

Good money chasing good policy is the prescription, not good money
chasing bad policy. The "far-reaching debate" Hakim wants is sound but
unlikely because of war promoters.

Look long and hard into the public policy syndicates that lie and have
no serious public interest at heart. Reason demands something different.

With drugs, even the law and justice theme rings phony -- like
documentaries for future TV episodes of "Cops." Some days, the glowing
reports about a bust or a capture look suspiciously like that banner
"Mission Accomplished," but eight long years before the Iraq War began
winding down.

To make the Iraq War increasingly a thing of the past, it took some
bold changes of policy, personnel and public attitude. Just as it will
take in the war on drugs.