TREATMENT OPTIONS ARE NEEDED IN WAR ON DRUGS

Linda Macia of Manchester rolled her wheelchair into Derry's Pinkerton
Academy to see if Republican presidential contender John McCain would
endorse medical marijuana. Macia said Sunday that she has a
neurological disorder, and marijuana is the only drug that can ease
her pain. McCain did not take the bait. "Every town hall meeting I
have, someone shows up and advocates for medical marijuana, and, by
the way, in all due respect, alleges that we are arresting the dead
and the dying, and I still have not seen any evidence of that,"
McCain told Macia. "I still would not support medical marijuana,
because I don't think that the preponderance of medical opinion in
America agrees with your assertion that it's the most effective way
of treating pain." Medical marijuana advocates, evidently well
organized, have been turning up at presidential candidate appearances
during the last few election cycles, one of many groups hoping that by
raising the issue in primary campaigns, it will shovel their cause
onto the national agenda.

In 2004, one activist got Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut
Democrat, to consider legalization for medical purposes. I have
little enthusiasm for questions posed to presidential candidates by
activist groups.

But debating the appropriateness of medical marijuana, or even whether
to make recreational marijuana legal, misses the point. The real drug
problem the presidential candidates and their state counterparts
should address is how to find an antidrug strategy that works.

What seems to work are effective prevention and treatment
programs.

Parents should ask the politicians why there's so much heroin in
northern New England. Drug cops should find out why illegal methadone
kills more people in this state than any other drug. For 25 years of
the "war on drugs," the nation and the state locked up hordes of
marijuana offenders without much success.

They're not typically violent offenders. A pothead puts up less of a
fight than a mean drunk.

But taking marijuana users off the street soaks up limited resources
that could be better spent fighting other crimes. Governments save
money and prevent new crime by treating addicted lawbreakers - in
particular, alcoholics - and enforcing laws aimed at controlling
dangerous drugs. I don't want to get into the argument for
decriminalization of marijuana, the fight that tied up the Legislature
early this year. I don't want to get into a car when the driver is
high on pot.

Marijuana users are usually nonviolent, but the distributors are no
longer peaceful hippies who, like, do their own thing.

Weed is distributed by gangsters who are just as prone to violence as
the goons who collect gambling debts. Nor do I want to get in a car
that's driven by a drunk.

Abuse of America's most popular legal drug, alcohol, brings big
trouble.

Excessive drinking frequently leads to violence.

Booze is a major gateway drug, and many drinkers wind up using illegal
narcotics and committing violent crimes.

Seven out of 10 parole or probation violations in New Hampshire
involve alcohol or drugs. Last month, a nonprofit prison reform group,
The Sentencing Project, issued a sobering report that documented
millions of arrests and measured a shrinking pool of resources. "It is
clear," the report said, "that the 'war on drugs' has reshaped the
way America responds to crime and ushered in an era of instability
and mistrust in countless communities." McCain's GOP rival, Rudolph
Giuliani, talks about how data can be used to fight crime. Here's some
data: Half a million people are in state and federal prisons on
drug-related offenses, 42 percent of them marijuana-related crimes.

State data point: Out of 2,700 inmates in the New Hampshire State
Prison system, 61 percent say they used alcohol; 12 percent admit to
using marijuana. The state's drug problem is underestimated because of
New Hampshire's weak data. If some drunk beats up an innocent
bystander, that's a crime of violence, not a drug crime.

The stick-up man who burglarizes a convenience store to get booze or
money for drugs commits a property crime, not a drug crime. The data
do show that incarceration for drug-related crimes is going up. And
treatment is going down, both here and, The Sentencing Project says,
nationally. Most alcohol abuse treatment in our state prison involves
watching a video; there's a waiting list for any other treatment
regime. The Sentencing Project reckons that no more than 15 percent of
the inmates receive any substance abuse treatment before they're
released. Instead of asking presidential candidates about medical
marijuana, some one ought to ask about how to deal with the nation's
real drug crisis.

State politicians should be forced to talk about how to treat drug
offenders.

Prison doesn't work. Who's got a better plan? John Milne is a veteran
New Hampshire political reporter and analyst.