DRUG CONTROL IN AMERICA NEEDS NEW FOCUS

Taxpayers are paying twice. They pay once with the billions spent
arresting users and again helping to repair the human tragedies the
arrests create.

America's drug control policies need a big dose of common sense - a
commodity in short supply in Washington. So, let's tune in to what
common sense citizens and conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr.
have to say about drugs in America and see how that squares with
official policies.

The gap between U.S. drug control policies and citizen preferences are
particularly wide when we look at how taxes are being spent and how
government drug policies are working their way into the doctor's office.

Wasting Taxes and Lives

A national survey conducted in 2001 by the
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press asked Americans to
pick the most effective actions the government could take to control
the use of illegal drugs. Only 4 percent recommended arresting drug
users as the most effective action.

But when we look at what the drug police actually did on the job in
2001, the last year for which federal, state and local data is
available from the Department of Justice in Washington, we find that
fully 67 percent of their drug enforcement money - or around $7.8
billion - was spent to arrest 1.28 million people for simple
possession of drugs.

In 2002, another 1.24 million drug possession arrests were made -
about one-half of them for possession of marijuana.

Thousands of those arrested - nonviolent "offenders" who have harmed
no one else - end up with shortened lives. They do jail time, lose
student loans, the right to housing benefits and their driver's
licenses. Families are torn apart and children left without adequate
support.

Bullying doctors. Pew also asked this question: "Regardless of what
you think about the personal nonmedical use of marijuana, do you think
doctors should or should not be allowed to prescribe marijuana for
medical purposes to treat their patients?"

Nationally, 73 percent replied that doctors should be allowed to
prescribe marijuana for their patients.

Clearly Americans want their doctors, not the government, to decide
whether marijuana should be used as a medical treatment.

But the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington flatly says, "Under
federal authority, there is no such thing as medical marijuana" and
doctors prescribing marijuana for their patients are criminals and
deserve to be punished.

What's ahead? Buckley, long the editor of the conservative National
Review, recently wrote that it is time to reform America's current
marijuana laws that are built on "moral fanaticism." "What is
required," he said, "is a genuine Republican groundswell. It is
happening, but ever so gradually."

To point the way, Buckley cited a 2003 Zogby survey that showed two
out of every five Americans believe "the government should treat
marijuana more or less the same way it treats alcohol: It should
regulate it, control it, tax it and make it illegal only for children."

Buckley has long favored this approach and, in a 1992 article, went so
far as to say, "Legalize drugs for those over 21, and execute anyone
convicted of selling drugs to a minor."

Groundswells for change don't start in the Republican or in the
Democratic camps. They start within the population and trickle up
through the political parties. When it comes to drug laws, Buckley
claims, "politicians high from righteousness" are lagging behind the
mood of the people and it's time they get busy and play catch-up. And
at least 40 percent of the voters seem to agree with him.