LEGALIZE DRUGS? JUST SAY NO

Beyond his highly visible crusade to elect Senator John Kerry to the
presidency, billionaire financier George Soros has quietly spent the past 15
years funding another political movement in American and around the world:
the campaign to legalize and even normalize the use of narcotics from
marijuana to heroin. Since 1991 Soros has contributed more than $15 million
to advocacy organizations and 17 separate state ballot initiatives aimed at
removing legal penalties on the theory that, in his own words, "the war on
drugs is doing more harm to our society than drug abuse itself."

He's hardly alone, of course - groups supporting various levels of
decriminalization span the ideological spectrum from the Socialist Party USA
to the libertarian CATO Institute. What they all have in common is a
defeatist mentality that America is losing the war on drugs, and a shared
faith that we can somehow win it by surrendering.

For sure, as Office of National Drug Control Policy Director John P. Walters
recently pointed out in the National Review, "legalization has enticed
intelligent commentators for years, no doubt because it offers, on the
surface, a simple solution to a complex problem." But Walters adds that
"reasoned debate on the consequences usually dampens enthusiasm, leaving
many erstwhile proponents feeling mugged by reality."

Just for starters, drug use would increase if it were legalized. The bedrock
economic law of supply and demand guarantees that narcotics would become
cheaper and easier to get once unencumbered by legal risk and promoted by
the great American marketing machine.

The effect would be ruinous, even in the case of "soft" drugs like
marijuana, which is already responsible for nearly two-thirds of individuals
who meet psychiatric criteria for substance-abuse treatment. And marijuana
is a widely-acknowledged "gateway" drug; In Holland, where it was legalized
in 1976, heroin addiction levels subsequently tripled.

Fortunately, while few would argue that victory is within sight, pessimism
over the future of the war on drugs has been vastly overstated. Consider:

* The claim is often made that hundreds of thousands of purportedly
harmless, "recreational" marijuana users are behind bars, straining judicial
resources and diverting the attention of law enforcement from more serious
crimes. But Walters points out that fewer than 1 percent of those imprisoned
for drug offenses are low-level marijuana users, and many of them have "pled
down" to a marijuana charge to avoid other, weightier convictions. "The vast
majority of those in prison on drug convictions," he says, "are true
criminals involved in drug trafficking, repeat offenses, or violent crime."

* Proponents of legalization also argue that because about half of all
referrals for substance-abuse treatment come from the criminal justice
system, the law is more of a problem than marijuana itself. But the same is
true of referrals for alcohol treatment, and no one argues that alcoholism
is a fiction created by the courts. Marijuana's role in emergency-room
visits has tripled over the past decade, not because judges are sending
patients to the hospital, but because of the well-documented increasing
potency of the drug.

* In surveys, eight times as many Americans report regular use of alcohol
than of marijuana. The law is a big part of the reason why. Far from a
hopeless battle, the war on drugs has made significant progress. According
to the Drug Enforcement Administration, overall drug abuse is down by more
than a third in the last twenty years. Cocaine use in particular has dropped
by an astounding 70 percent.

Like the battle against cancer and other diseases, this war will and must
continue. The alternative is too dreadful to contemplate. As Walters puts
it, "Drug legalizers will not be satisfied with a limited distribution of
medical marijuana, nor will they stop at legal marijuana for sale in
convenience stores ... Using the discourse of rights without
responsibilities, the effort strives to establish an entitlement to
addictive substances. The impact will be devastating."

If you've ever known someone hooked on drugs, you know what he means.