THE OTHER LOST WAR

If you think the war on terrorism is going badly -- and our
intelligence agencies warn that al Qaeda has reconstituted itself --
take a look at the war on drugs.

It has been twenty-five years since Ronald Reagan declared war on
drugs. Our prison population has quadrupled since then. A
multi-billion dollar prison-industrial complex has sprouted up to
house all those sentenced for dealing or using illicit drugs. Instead
of building schools, states are building prisons. Billions more has
been spent at the borders, and in efforts to eradicate drug cartels
from Colombia to Afghanistan. And yet today, experts report that drugs
cheaper and more potent than ever are easily available across the country.

In a stunning study for the Chicago Tribune, Darnell Little reports on
a drug war that has lost its way. And even as politicians posture
tough on drugs and crime, those closer to the effort realize it is
time to change strategies. As Tim Evans, chief judge of the Circuit
Court of Cook County, summarized: "There was a thought back in the
1980s that if you just lock these people away that somehow that's
going to solve everything," Evans said. "Hasn't worked. And I believe
now the pendulum is swinging away from lock 'em up and throw away the
key back toward trying to find a rational way of solving this problem."

But the casualties in this war have been steadily piling up, and, in
stunning disproportion, they have a very different makeup than the
nation's drug users do.

Most drug users are not black or latino, they are white. As Little
reports, a 2003 study by the University of Illinois at Chicago's
Survey Research Laboratory found that rates of illicit drug use in
Illinois were in fact essentially equal across racial groups.
Nationally, similar results were found by the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Why do we think that people who use illegal drugs are minorities?
Because minorities are the ones who end up being prosecuted and going
to prison.

The reality is very stark -- and simply shameful. If they use illicit
drugs, blacks are more likely to be arrested for possession and sale
of drugs. They are more likely to be prosecuted if arrested, more
likely to be incarcerated if prosecuted, and more likely to get
stiffer punishment if sentenced.

The statistics that Little arrays from federal sources detail this
reality. African Americans make up 13% of illicit drug users, but 32%
of those arrested, and over half of those incarcerated in state prisons.

In Illinois, where policing is aggressive in Chicago and passive in
the suburbs, the racial disparities are even worse. 70% of illicit
drug users are white, but nearly two-thirds of those incarcerated are
black.

The numbers count lost lives. Young men predominantly sent to jails
that are colleges in crime. They earn a record that shadows them, and
gain knowledge of crime that condemns them. Young families are torn
asunder.

Go to college, and you're in a virtual free drug zone. Go to work in
the inner city, and you're in a free fire zone.

Why the racial discrepancies? Much of it is simple race -- the
prejudices that still distort too much of our lives. Some of it is
related circumstance. Much of the urban drug trafficking takes place
in open air markets controlled by street gangs. The area around the
markets becomes plagued by crime and drug violence. Citizens demand
the police crack down. In the suburbs and college campuses, the
trafficking tends to be private, done person to person in the dorm
room, the frat house, the suburban living room. There's less
concentrated crime and violence, and, despite all the posturing about
the drug war, the public tends to be relaxed about
enforcement.

Legislators have passed laws calling for more severe sentencing for
sales around schools, churches, public parks and public housing.
Studies show that virtually the entire inner city neighborhoods are
covered by those laws, whereas far less of the more spread out suburbs
is affected. And, there is the obscene disparity between sentencing
for cocaine -- the drug of the affluent -- and crack cocaine -- the
drug of the street.

The fight against al Qaeda went wrong as soon as the administration
called it a war, invaded Iraq, and scorned the alliances and police
and intelligence work vital to countering stateless terrorists. The
effort to relieve the blight against drugs went wrong when Reagan
called it a war, summoned military force against poppy fields from
Peru to Afghanistan and unleashed the police in our cities, scorning
the treatment vital to those who are addicted, and the education and
jobs vital to giving the young hope and a way out. Judge Evans says
we're beginning to learn that, but as we've learned in Iraq, changing
course won't be easy.