WHO'RE THE REAL DOPES IN THE WAR ON DRUGS?

A few days ago the King County, Washington government made it illegal to
throw computers and cell phones away.

That created, or expanded, a new industry - disposal of computers and cell
phones in Seattle and environs. New businesses formed, other already
existing firms expanded their operations.

This kind of thing happens often. Government creates a need and the
business community rushes to fill it with goods or services we didn't
previously need.

For instance, some of those rental storage unit companies once went to the
Nevada Legislature and asked for a law that said they were exempt from
legal responsibility for the security of their storage units. Such
companies provide only two things, storage and security, and the change
would cut that burden in half, but the Legislature passes liability waivers
out like cookies.

So the change was made, subject to a provision that renters had to be
warned on the rental contract to get insurance if they wanted some
protection for their property.

So a new industry came to be - the sale of insurance on the contents of
rental storage units.

I was reminded of all this when I heard about former Reagan cabinet member
William Bennett's comments on aborting black babies.

Bennett was appearing on a call-in show and a caller asked him if it were
true that "the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the
last 30-something years could fund Social Security as we know it today."

In the bloodless fashion that he has patented, Bennett said, "You know, one
of the arguments in this book "Freakonomics" that they make is that the
declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of
the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up ... But I do know that
it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your
sole purpose - you could abort every black baby in this country, and your
crime rate would go down.

"That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing
to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these
far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

Bennett, who postures as a champion of values, is one of a number of
figures who are largely responsible for creating the multi-billion dollar
illegal drug industry.

After he served as President Reagan's education secretary, Bennett
volunteered to become George Bush the Elder's drug "czar."

It may be a surprise to some people born in, say, the last thirty years to
know that major drug abuse is a relatively new problem. It's a product of
drug prohibition and punitive enforcement.

Marijuana wasn't outlawed until the year my mother was 20, and even after
that it wasn't rigorously enforced. Not until the Nixon administration did
Congress get serious about pouring massive resources into crackdowns, and
that policy died with Nixon's resignation. President Ford dropped it, and
President Carter didn't revive it until the later stages of his
administration. Since then there have been unbroken tough enforcement under
every president, Democratic and Republican.

When Bennett took over the White House drug office, he wanted to promote
what he called "values." This means that drug use could not be treated as a
health problem, which it is.

Instead, it had to be a battle between good and evil, with drug users
considered criminals and health care professionals considered accessories.
Bennett preached kicking kids out of school for using drugs, a surefire way
of creating criminals. He counseled against blaming drug use on "poverty
and racism - which help to breed and spread the contagion of drug use." It
was self-contradictory, but so it went.

The tough approach fell most heavily on those least able to protect
themselves, such as poor pregnant women (who were prosecuted for child
abuse if they took drugs) and African Americans. Bennett and his cronies
pursued policies that have nearly destroyed the black family in the U.S. by
leaving tens of thousands of households with no fathers (there are heavier
penalties for drugs used by blacks than those used by whites), even as
Bennett has preached about the value of family.

And when all else failed, Bennett simply lied to make the problem seem
urgent, as when he claimed that use "of the most harmful drugs is
increasing" after seven years of declining drug use. (In a book-length
attack on Bill Clinton, values champion Bennett wrote that, "if a man's
word means nothing, it means nothing," whatever that means.)

The lure of the forbidden is the best sales pitch, and the nation is
saddled with a drug problem it never had before drug prohibition. Punitive
policies supported by Bennett and company have created a gargantuan
multi-billion international market and plenty of drug warlords to supply
it. If, as Bennett says, black kids grow up to be criminals, it is because
he helped create a criminal industry that provides them with work.

Myers is a veteran capital reporter. His column, "Against the Grain,"
appears here on Wednesdays.