DRUG WAR: ANOTHER COSTLY FAILURE

While the nation focuses on the bizarre failure of foreign policy and
an Iraq war that is daily becoming a larger international
embarrassment, at home the damage of a failed drug war is also taking
its toll.

Most news about the drug war does not recognize the reasons this "war"
is a failure and is a major, seldom discussed issue of our political
system. May I suggest a few reasons?

. There is a continuing severe escalation in damage to civil
liberties. Few pay attention unless it is their own civil liberties,
and many do not care because of ignorance.

. Drug convictions prevent voting, employment, getting an education
and even visits between parents and kids.

. Convictions destroy people's lives while filling an ever-expanding
prison system.

. The billions of dollars spent have made drugs more dangerous for
those who use and more profitable for those who sell.

. Judicial systems, as well as individuals, have been corrupted. Drugs
are often used to terrorize the public by far too many for political
gain or budget money.

. Drug enforcement is the biggest source of racial injustice in the
post-Jim Crow era. Although 80 percent of users are white, 80 percent
of those imprisoned are African-American or Latino.

. The war on drugs is directly responsible for the appalling practice
of racial profiling. Minorities are stopped and searched, but drugs
are rarely found. Minorities are 50 to 70 times more likely to be stopped.

. In New York City alone, 55,000 people were stopped and frisked:
50,000 were innocent, two-thirds were African-American or Latino.

. In airports, two-thirds of the people subjected to body searches are
African-American or Latinos. No drugs have been found in 96 percent of
the searches.

You also should be alarmed that marijuana prohibition is responsible
for 700,000 arrests each year. Many of those charged are using it for
medical purposes. Is this cost-effective work by the justice system?

I am not a user, nor do I advocate use and certainly not abuse, but
the solution proposed by great minds and conscientious individuals
gives us a better solution to this national problem.

The use and control of drugs should be grounded in science, health,
compassion and human rights. Our fears, prejudices and punitive
prohibitions should be no more, while we advance policies and
attitudes that best reduce harms of misuse.

Law enforcement should not be forced, selectively and with traditional
prejudices, to be involved in or find reward in the addictive and
physiological nature of this human problem. Humans must admit their
addictions, which must be treated medically and psychologically, not
politically or primarily by our judicial system.