END WAR ON DRUGS, SAVE BLACK AMERICA

One key to getting past the race issue in America is to end the war on
drugs. John McWhorter says it's the most important thing we could do.

McWhorter, the former Berkeley linguistics professor and now senior
fellow at the Manhattan Institute, specifically indicts the war on
drugs for "destroying black America." McWhorter, by the way, is black.

The "main obstacle(s) to getting black America past the illusion that
racism is still a defining factor in America" are, he says, "the
strained relationship between young black men and police forces" and
the "massive number of black men in prison."

And what accounts for this? Prohibition.

"Therefore, if the War on Drugs were terminated, the main factor
keeping race-based resentment a core element in the American social
fabric would no longer exist. America would be a better place for all."

McWhorter sees prohibition as the saboteur of black families. "It has
become a norm for black children to grow up in single-parent homes,
their fathers away in prison for long spells and barely knowing them.
In poor and working-class black America, a man and a woman raising
their children together is, of all things, an unusual sight. The War
on Drugs plays a large part in this."

He also blames the black market created by prohibition for diverting
young black men from the normal workforce. "Because the illegality of
drugs keeps the prices high," he says, "there are high salaries to be
made in selling them. This makes selling drugs a standing tempting
alternative to seeking lower-paying legal employment."

This has devastating consequences. The attractive illegal livelihood
relieves men of the need to develop skills that would provide stable
legal incomes.

To those who argue that there's a shortage of jobs for black men, he
says that is refuted by the black immigrants who thrive in America.

"It is often said that because immigrants have a unique initiative or
'pluck' in relocating to the United States in the first place, it is
unfair to compare black Americans to them. However, the War on Drugs
has made it impossible to see whether black Americans would exhibit
such 'pluck' themselves if drug selling were not a tempting
alternative."

One poisonous byproduct of prohibition and the black market, McWhorter
says, is that going to prison is now a "badge of honor." "To black men
involved in the drug trade, enduring prison time, regarded as an
unjust punishment for merely selling people something they want (with
some justification), is seen as a badge of strength: The ex-con is a
hero rather than someone who went the wrong way." This attitude did
not exist before drug prohibition.

Would cheaper and freely available drugs bring their own catastrophe?
McWhorter says no.

"Fears of an addiction epidemic are unfounded. None such has occurred
in Portugal, where the