FIXING THE WAR ON DRUGS

A high-powered international commission has declared the war on drugs
a failure. It urges governments to consider decriminalizing the use
of drugs, especially marijuana, as a way to combat organized crime.

The report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, issued on June 2,
attracted little attention and may simply gather dust like other such
documents. But it is worth considering, not least because two of the
panel's outspoken members are former Secretary of State George P.
Shultz and the eminent economist Paul A. Volcker, who after serving
as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, continues as a one-man
watch dog on banking and speculation policy.

They signed the report, they wrote in The New York Times, because
they believe that "drug addiction is harmful to individuals, impairs
health, and has adverse societal effects." They said they wanted an
effective program to deal with the problem.

The question is how to go about it. "For 40 years now," they wrote,
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 readily available. Crime rates remain high.

The commission listed unintended consequences of the present
approach: growth of a huge criminal black market, using scarce
resources for a vast law enforcement system, pushing drug protection
to new and less enforced sites, pushing consumers to new addictive
products, and turning drug users into social outcasts.

Instead, the commission would encourage open debate, confine
prosecution to the those who run the business, not the users and
people at the lower end of the distribution system, who are more
victims than perpetrators. Across-the-board prosecution would be
replaced by more therapeutic treatment of addiction and more respect
for the human rights of all concerned.

The report noted that successful operations against organized
criminals have had little lasting impact on drug prices and
availability and that eradication of opium, cannabis or coca crops
merely shoves illicit cultivation elsewhere.

Thus, the commission goes far beyond the mere decriminalization of
marijuana, which by itself could reduce its street price but might
spread its use. Portugal stopped prosecuting the use or possession of
all drugs in 2001. While overall drug use kept pace with use in other
countries, use of heroin, the Portuguese favorite, declined sharply
and reduced the law-enforcement burden.

A clear lesson is that the present system needs serious rethinking.
Treatment can be better than prosecution in dealing with addicts.