EVEN THE COPS KNOW METH IS WORSE THAN MARIJUANA

Earlier this month, a survey from the National Association of
Counties reported that local law enforcement agencies think the
federal government has its anti-drug priorities backward, putting too
much emphasis on marijuana and not enough on truly lethal drugs like
methamphetamine. Now a new report suggests that even the federal
government's top drug cops - the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
- - know something is very wrong.

They'll never say it explicitly, of course. Executive branch agencies
don't openly criticize White House policies. But the message in the
DEA's 2005 "National Drug Threat Assessment" - prepared in February
but released with no publicity this month - is unmistakable: The war
on marijuana is a failure, and cops overwhelmingly see meth as a
greater threat.

For reasons no one outside the Bush administration understands, the
White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under director
John Walters has been obsessed with marijuana. In November 2002, the
office sent a letter to the nation's prosecutors declaring flatly,
"Nationwide, no drug matches the threat posed by marijuana."

That emphasis has continued, most visibly in ONDCP's press
conferences, news releases and ad campaigns. Recent efforts have
included highly dubious claims that marijuana causes mental illness
and even more dubious claims that marijuana causes lung cancer.

America's police have different priorities, the DEA found. Asked to
identify the greatest drug threat in their communities, only 12
percent of local law enforcement agencies named marijuana - a figure
that has been declining for years. In contrast, 35.6 percent named
cocaine and 39.6 cited methamphetamine as the greatest threat -
despite the fact that marijuana use is much more common.

The DEA said, "Data indicate that, despite the volume of marijuana
trafficked and used in this country, for many in law enforcement
marijuana is much less an immediate problem than methamphetamine, for
example, which is associated with more tangible risks such as violent
users and toxic production sites."

While sucking resources away from more serious drug problems, the
government's war on marijuana hasn't even succeeded on its own terms.
Despite the eradication of some 31/2 million marijuana plants last
year, the DEA could find "no reports of a trend toward decreased
availability" anywhere in the country. And rates of marijuana use
among both adults and teens remain higher than they were when
President Nixon first declared "War on Drugs" more than three decades
ago. "Indeed," the report noted, "reporting from some areas has
suggested that marijuana is easier for youths to obtain than alcohol
or cigarettes."

This is crazy. America desperately needs drug policies based on
science, reason and common sense. If the current regime at ONDCP is
incapable of moving in that direction, the president must replace
director Walters with someone who lets policy be guided by facts, not ideology.