THE WAR ON DRUGS IS WORTH FIGHTING

Last Friday's nationwide protests -- one of which occurred in Lansing
- -- of the "war on drugs" on its unofficial 40th anniversary were a bit
misguided. When there's talk about ending the war on drugs, it's
mainly focused on the legalization of recreational marijuana and the
high cost of fighting a war against a noun.

While the legalization of recreational marijuana is another matter,
the war on drugs is not only a fight against marijuana: It's a war
against cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines -- the hardcore drugs
that can kill you the first time you use them. It's a fight against
drugs that haven't been invented yet or haven't yet reached our
shores. Drugs such as "krokodil," the cheap morphine variant that's
terrorizing the poorest and most remote areas of Russia.

Yes, occasionally overzealous officials trample over Fourth Amendment
rights in the pursuit of drugs.

But drugs still are illegal, and thus, the pursuit of getting them off
the street allows for a little massaging of the Fourth Amendment.
Busting a distributor and confiscating the drugs so he or she never
can affect anyone is worth it.

Following the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law, preserves
the health and safety of communities. The war on drugs is a fight for
the health and safety of those who have to live around addicts willing
to commit crimes to fuel their addiction.

Yes, drugs are keeping families apart through the incarceration of
nonviolent criminals.

But there are a host of societal factors that lead to the
incarceration of nonviolent individuals that can't be traced back to
drugs of any kind. Drug use is not a prerequisite for crime, and crime
isn't a prerequisite for drug use.

Not every nonviolent criminal sells or abuses drugs, but that doesn't
excuse the ones who do. You commit a crime, you do something illegal
in this country, you get punished. And drug possession is illegal.

As for the cost of fighting the war on drugs, there always is a high
cost when you're fighting a war. If we didn't do everything that was
costly, we wouldn't have federal health care. Or federal jails. Or a
national defense program. There is a price to be paid to ensure our
health doesn't wane.

And if we don't fight the war on drugs, if we eliminate our costs,
nothing changes. Legalizing heroin or cocaine wouldn't make them any
less deadly or less addictive. It's not as if lifting the restrictions
on drugs stops their influx from other countries or the production of
drugs in our own country.

And just because the monetary cost of doing something is mounting,
that doesn't mean it needs to be eliminated immediately. We don't
fight drug use because it's the most cost-effective way to eliminate
drugs from America. We fight drug use because it has negative effects
on the well-being of American citizens. But that's not to say that the
war on drugs is perfect.

Perhaps we can look at closing the disparities in sentencing for
different types of drugs. The Fair Sentencing Act recently reduced the
sentencing disparity between powder cocaine and crack cocaine from
100:1 to 18:1, which still seems excessive when it's essentially the
same drug.

Perhaps if we consider the motives of individuals who use drugs, we
stand a better chance of permanently rehabilitating them. Treating
drug abuse as a mental issue rather than a criminal one, such as
alcohol or sexual abuse, hopefully will help addicts reach beyond the
limits of their addiction.

Also, easing punishments on cases of simple possession, while
increasing sentencing for producers and distributors, would place the
importance on catching distributors -- cutting off the supply of drugs
at its source instead of over-punishing addicts who aren't key to
winning the war on drugs.

But shrugging our societal shoulders at hardcore drug use because
marijuana use is more culturally accepted than it previously was
doesn't help addicts or society. In order to help both groups, we need
to fight the production and distribution of drugs while simultaneously
caring for those who already are addicted.

If that sounds difficult, that's because it is. But nothing worth
doing is easy. No war is perfect. Fighting the war on drugs might be a
losing battle, but it's a worthy one.