A REAL DEBATE ABOUT DRUG POLICY

George P. Shultz And Paul A. Volcker On Why The 'War On Drugs' Has
Failed-And What To Do Next

"The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for
individuals and societies around the world."

That is the opening sentence of a report issued last week by the
Global Commission on Drug Policy. Both of us have signed on to this
report. Why?

We believe that drug addiction is harmful to individuals, impairs
health and has adverse societal effects. So we want an effective
program to deal with this problem.

The question is: What is the best way to go about it? For 40 years
now, our nation's approach has been to criminalize the entire process
of producing, transporting, selling and using drugs, with the
exception of tobacco and alcohol. Our judgment, shared by other
members of the commission, is that this approach has not worked, just
as our national experiment with the prohibition of alcohol failed.
Drugs are still readily available, and crime rates remain high. But
drug use in the U.S. is no lower than, and sometimes surpasses, drug
use in countries with very different approaches to the problem.

At the same time, the costs of the drug war have become astronomical.
Inmates arrested for consuming drugs and for possessing small
quantities of them now crowd our prisons, where too often they learn
how to become real criminals. The dollar costs are huge, but they pale
in comparison to the lives being lost in our neighborhoods and
throughout the world. The number of drug-related casualties in Mexico
is on the same order as the number of U.S. lives lost in the Vietnam
and Korean wars.

Throughout our hemisphere, governance and economic development have
suffered because of drugs. It is no accident that the initiative for
this global commission came from former presidents of Latin American
nations. These countries, sometimes with American support, have made
strong efforts to reduce drug supplies. But they have increasingly
concluded that drug policies in the U.S. are making it more difficult
for their people to enjoy security and prosperity.

The problem starts with the demand for drugs. As Milton Friedman put
it forcibly over 20 years ago in the pages of this paper: "It is
demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels.
Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics
of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law
enforcement officials."

We do not support the simple legalization of all drugs. What we do
advocate is an open and honest debate on the subject. We want to find
our way to a less costly and more effective method of discouraging
drug use, cutting down the power of organized crime, providing better
treatment and minimizing negative societal effects.

Other countries that have tried different approaches include Britain,
the Netherlands, Switzerland, Portugal and Australia. What can we
learn from these varied experiences, some more successful than others?
What can we learn from our own experience in reducing sharply the
smoking of cigarettes or in the handling of alcohol after the end of
Prohibition?

Simple legalization is by no means the only or safest approach. One
possibility is to decriminalize the individual use of drugs while
maintaining laws against supplying them, thus allowing law-enforcement
efforts to focus on the drug peddlers. Some of the money that is saved
can be spent on treatment centers, which drug users are more likely to
seek out if doing so does not expose them to the risk of arrest.

The situation that confronts us today is dangerous. After 40 years of
concentrating on one approach that has been unsuccessful, we should be
willing to take a look at other ways of working to solve this pressing
problem. As the global commission concludes: "Break the taboo on
debate and reform. The time for action is now."

- - Mr. Shultz, former U.S. secretary of state, is a distinguished
fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Mr. Volcker,
former chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve
System, is professor emeritus of international economic policy at
Princeton University.