THE WAR ON DRUGS

There's No Good News

Mary Anastasia O'Grady's June 17 Americas column "Blame U.S. Drug
Policy for the Bolivian Uprising," describing the manner in which the
production of illicit drugs is destroying fragile democracies in
Bolivia and other Andean countries, confirms my experiences as police
chief of Kansas City, Mo., and San Jose, Calif., for 18 years. No
matter how many arrests local police made for drug use and sale, the
flow of drugs into the country never lessened.

Each year, at annual meetings of Major City Police Chiefs, the DEA
would give us the good news: U.S. efforts had helped one nation
reduce drug production. Then the bad news: drug production had
increased someplace else, including in our own nation, with lethal
substances like methamphetamine.

It was the sausage effect. Squeeze one end, the other end expands.
And the violence and corruption in our own as well as other countries
came to resemble that of Prohibition as Milton Friedman had predicted
as long ago as 1973. Mr. Friedman noted that if U.S. drug laws
worked, other nations wouldn't have the lucrative American trade.
It's time to realize that, despite our best efforts, millions of
Americans spend billions of dollars on illegal drugs. Without
Prohibition, the profits would be no greater than that of alcohol.
When was the last time you heard of a Budweiser dealer being gunned
down in a drive-by shooting? The law of supply and demand is far
older and more powerful than the counterproductive laws passed by Congress.

Joseph D. McNamara

Research Fellow

The Hoover Institution

Stanford, Calif.