AT LEAST 4 GOOD REASONS TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS

"If we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely
destroy us," President Richard Nixon told Congress in a special
message on June 17, 1971, that generally is credited as the day the
"war on drugs" began. Actually, Nixon didn't use the term "war on
drugs" in the address. He used it later. And while Nixon talked tough
about going after drug traffickers, he emphasized that rehabilitation
would be a priority as he dedicated the lion's share - $105 million
of $155 million in new antidrug funding - "solely for the treatment
and rehabilitation of drug-addicted individuals."

Some 40 years later, there are only losers in the drug war. Drug use
is up; 118 million Americans have used illegal drugs, and the cost of
prosecuting the drug war and offenders continues to mount.

On Friday, various antidrug war groups will be holding vigils in
Washington, San Francisco and other cities to remember the drug war's
many victims.

"The war you plan is not necessarily the war you end up fighting,"
noted Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation. Sterling should know. As a congressional aide, he helped
write the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which featured draconian federal
mandatory minimum sentences.

Sterling will be at the vigil Friday in Washington's Lafayette Square.

This column is not to pay homage to drug use. Drug abuse was
responsible for the death of 38,371 Americans in 2007, according to
White House statistics. In 2009, 10.5 million Americans reported they
had driven under the influence of illicit drugs. That's scary.

Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and it doesn't work for drugs. As
Daniel Okrent wrote in his book, "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of
Prohibition," "In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a
failure. It encouraged criminality and institutionalized hypocrisy.
It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the
political system, and proposed profound limitations on individual rights."

I'll go down the list.

Encouraged criminality: The Department of Justice reported that in
2009, "mid-level and retail drug distribution in the United States
was dominated by more than 900,000 criminally active gang members"
representing more than 20,000 U.S. gangs.

Institutional hypocrisy: President Obama has admitted to using
illegal drugs, President George W. Bush coyly would not say and
President Bill Clinton said he didn't inhale. A drug conviction could
have curtailed their careers, yet all three presidents were drug
warriors in the White House.

Deprived revenue: Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimated in 2008
that legalizing drugs could save federal, state and local governments
$44 billion per year, while taxing drugs could yield an added $33 billion.

Limiting individual rights: Allow me to quote Neill Franklin, a
former Baltimore narcotics cop and executive director of Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition. "President Obama needs to think
about where he would be right now had he been caught with drugs as a
young black man. It's probably not in the Oval Office, so why does he
insist on ramping up a drug war that needlessly churns other young
black men through the criminal justice system?" LEAP will release a
report this week that addresses Franklin's concerns.

On the state level, the drug war has begun to wind down. In 2000,
Californians passed Proposition 36, which mandates probation and
treatment for those charged with drug possession. Last year Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law that made possession of small
amounts of marijuana an infraction; 13 other states have similar laws.

As Sterling put it, "The states are no longer drinking the Kool-Aid
from Washington on drug policy."

As for Washington: "Washington is never going to be the leader on
this. They don't lead public opinion. They follow public opinion."