LEGALIZING DRUGS WOULD STOP THE BLEEDING

Here we go again. The new year dawned in Hartford a week ago with a
double homicide on Francis Avenue in Parkville, normally a pretty
quiet street. One of the two suspects, 20-year-old Jose Medina, was
caught after a harrowing car chase with a sizable stash of heroin and
other drugs in his car.

It's not yet known if the slayings were, in the all-too-common
phrase, "drug-related," but lethal violence around illegal drugs has
been a scourge of Hartford for more than three decades. Despite the
best efforts of two generations of police officers as well as
prosecutors and others, it continues.

Although overall crime numbers are down somewhat, the specter of
violence inhibits growth and economic development. For example, a New
Jersey developer bought and rehabbed 10 handsome apartment buildings
on Bedford Street in the North End, spending more than $5 million,
but has had all kinds of trouble renting them because of drugs and
related gunplay in the area.

The "war on drugs" approach hasn't worked, at staggering cost. Is
there another way to stop this insanity?

A couple of days before the Parkville shootings, a once-prominent
Hartford crime figure, Anthony "Tony" Volpe, cashed out his chips. In
an eloquent obituary, The Courant's Ed Mahony reported that Volpe
once presided over illegal gambling and related activities, but "at
the end, there was little over which to preside." The mob's illegal
gambling business was eviscerated by legal gambling.

Which raises this question -- could the same thing happen with drugs?

The author, linguist and political commentator John McWhorter thinks
so. In a recent The New Republic blog post (http://bit.ly/eXcs2T and
well worth your time), McWhorter, who is African American, argues
that ending the war on drugs would improve lives in urban black
communities and the country at large.

The crux of his persuasive argument is this: "If there were no way to
sell drugs on the street at a markup, then young black men who drift
into this route would instead have to get legal work. They would.
Those insisting that they would not have about as much faith in human
persistence and ingenuity as those who thought women past their
five-year welfare cap would wind up freezing on sidewalk grates."

Making drugs available in clinics or by prescription would eliminate
in a generation what McWhorter calls the "black problem" or 'black
malaise" in America. There would be a new black (in Hartford we might
infer Latino as well) community in which all able-bodied men had legal work.

In this community, "young black men, much less likely to wind up in
prison cells or caskets, would be a constant presence -- and thus
stay in the lives of their children. The black male community would
no longer include a massive segment of underskilled, drug-addicted
ex-cons churning in and out by the thousands year after year, and
thus black boys growing up in these communities would not see this
life as a norm. They would grow up to get jobs, period."

And these boys would not grow up with a bone-deep sense of the police
- -- and thus whites -- as an enemy.

They would stay in school, which "is a prime reason the War on Drugs
must end. It tears poor black communities to pieces. Not only by
flooding them with police -- but by encouraging bright young black
people to work the black market and lending it an air of heroism."

If you'd like the same message with a British accent, McWhorter
directs us to England's former top drug official, Bob Ainsworth. He
recently came out for replacing "our failed war on drugs with a
strict system of legal regulation, to make the world a safer,
healthier place, especially for our children. We must take the trade
away from organized criminals and hand it to the control of doctors
and pharmacists."

The illegal drug trade doesn't just cripple American cities. It
bankrolls international terrorism and has turned parts of Mexico into
war zones. The whole thing is crazy. What other crime has an
organization of police officers, judges and prosecutors, such as Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition, working for its repeal?

The failed war on drugs has cost Hartford and Connecticut a bloody
fortune, and hasn't worked. Well, the city and the state now have
extreme budget difficulties. Now is the time to try something
different. In mid-March, Leadership Greater Hartford and others will
sponsor a forum on this topic, which I will moderate, with the goal
of really making a change in drug policy. I'll keep you posted on
time and place.