CAN ONE CITY REDUCE U.S. DRUG LAW MADNESS?

Can a single city do anything to change drug policies that are delivering
terror to our inner city streets, diverting police, clogging our courts,
breaking up families and making a once-proud America quite literally the
incarceration capital of the world?

It's tough because federal and state drug laws, passed by tragically
misguided "law-and-order" politicians, are highly intrusive. But Syracuse,
N.Y., with a detailed analysis of drug law impact by outgoing City Auditor
Minchin Lewis, followed up by recent city council hearings, is courageously
asking tough questions and searching for alternatives.

Lewis' audit, inspired by Syracuse drug reformer Nicolas Eyle, focused on
the Syracuse police department. It discovered that 22 percent of the
department's 28,800 arrests in a single year were for drug-related
incidents, more than arrests for assaults, disturbances and larcenies
combined. Almost 2,000 people were charged with possession or sale of
marijuana.

Lewis found that drug arrests were focused in six poor, heavily black
inner-city neighborhoods. Police raids in search of evidence were rendering
housing units, many government-owned, uninhabitable, and forcing many
families to split up because of government rules evicting drug users from
public housing.

If Syracuse's drug raid and arrest policy is intended to reduce drug use,
the Lewis audit concluded, "it is not achieving its goal. The drug activity
is continuing with an ever-increasing spiral of violence."

It's true, Lewis concluded, that the city can't change federal or state
drug laws. But it can use its authority over police to reduce the emphasis
on drug-related arrests and focus on "harm reduction and prevention efforts
rather than absolute prohibition."

City council member Stephanie Miner said she found citizens typically
unconcerned about people using drugs in the confines of their homes, but
deeply alarmed by the violence visited on their neighborhoods by
drug-dealing on the street.

"The main effect of prohibition is to drive the market underground,"
Jeffrey Miron, a Boston University economist and drug trade expert, told
the Syracuse council hearing in October. Like the alcohol trade in the
Roaring Twenties, he said, narcotics rendered illegal by federal decree
soar in price and have created an opportunity for traffickers and dealers
interested in getting a share of the $65-billion-a-year nationwide market.

Eyle, head of Syracuse-based ReconsiDer, will meet again with the city
council this month to discuss such steps as a resolution asking the federal
and state governments to change drug policies that are merely stimulating
black-market activity, crime and violence. Instructions to divert
Syracuse's police to more important tasks, perhaps lowering the priority of
marijuana arrests in the city, will be considered.

"This is a unique opportunity to change the image of the city, from an
undistinguished Rust Belt city to a progressive community actively working
to improve itself," Eyle argues. But it's clear his long-term goal is much
broader: lifting drug prohibition altogether.

What would that mean? Eyle suggests European-style "harm reduction,"
recognizing that a segment of the population will always use illegal drugs,
so that government's role is to reduce the harm to the user and society. A
possible approach: decriminalizing personal possession of drugs, leaving
importation and manufacture and sale of significant amounts illegal. There
would also be voluntary treatment programs for addicts.

What about total "legalization"? It's a good possibility, says Eyle, if we
revise, hand-in-hand, appropriate regulations. The parallels in his
argument are intriguing:

"We currently regulate alcohol to insure its purity and to keep it out of
the hands of children. We regulate its points of distribution and hours of
sale. We tax it. Do we still have an alcohol problem? You bet. Can kids
obtain alcohol? Absolutely."

But, Eyle asks, do we have "a large market in every community selling
alcohol to minors? No. Are beer salesmen spraying bullets at each other to
settle arguments over shelf space in the supermarket? No."

Legalization, by this reasoning, is OK, and good for us all, if it can
successfully eliminate the gruesome waves of crime that surround today's
illegal drug market. The "how" could be complex: Does government do the
selling, or does the free market? Is advertising permitted? How do rules
differ for marijuana, cocaine, heroin?

But just think what legalization could deliver: radically reduced incentive
to crime, far safer streets and cities, fewer shattered families, less
crowded and costly prisons breeding new criminals, more racial equity. In a
society that prizes freedom and innovation, I'd call this an experiment we
owe ourselves.