SENSE AND FOLLY IN THE DRUG WAR

Add Canada to the list of countries the Bush administration is mad at for
poor reasons. This time it's conflicting policies on illicit drugs. Long an
advocate of controlling drug abuse through treatment and education instead
of punishment, Canada is wisely experimenting with new means for combating
the social harm caused by illegal mind-altering drugs.

One initiative in the works, decriminalizing the possession and use of
small amounts of relatively harmless marijuana, has the Bush anti-drug
Cossacks up in arms, with heightened security measures being talked about
along our northern borders. In the age of al-Qaida, it is boneheaded for
the administration to spend as much as a dime on protections against pot
smokers in Manitoba. Yet Bush drug czar John P. Walters has joined with
Attorney General John Ashcroft and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in
decrying the Canadian proposal, which Parliament is expected to pass. Mr.
Walters said relaxed marijuana laws up north could lead to a flood of
marijuana heading south -- as if pot isn't already readily available to the
average American consumer.

Mr. Walters has also labeled "immoral" the city of Vancouver's "safer
injection sites" for heroin addicts. Based on a successful Swiss model, the
Vancouver clinics are staffed by nurses who dispense clean needles, swabs
and sterile water. This cuts down on AIDS and other diseases and brings
addicts into a setting where they can be encouraged to enter treatment
programs. Mr. Walters termed the Vancouver approach "state-sponsored
suicide." His answer is to throw drug addicts in jail. Mr. Walters also
shares the Bush administration's disdain for Canada's humane policy on the
medical uses of marijuana, which distinguishes between what in some cases
is self-destructive behavior and the alleviation of suffering among the
seriously ill.

It's not that the Canadian government is indifferent to the family and
social harm that often accompany drug addiction. Canada, however, means to
do what works, not simply maintain a cruel and demonstrably ineffectual
multi-million-dollar drug-enforcement and incarceration industry.

Among the many U.S. anti-drug devices that have failed, according to a new
federally financed study, is drug testing in schools. A study of 76,000
high-school students found that young people whose schools do regular
random testing of students do not have less drug use than schools that
don't test. In declaring student drug-testing constitutional, the Supreme
Court ruled in 1995 that privacy rights were trumped by the need to deter
substance abuse among the young. The "efficacy of this means [drug
testing]" was "self-evident," according to Justice Antonin Scalia.
Self-evident to Mr. Scalia, but not borne out by the facts.

Perhaps Canada's approach to drugs is so alarming to the Bush
administration because it may finally expose the U.S. approach as wasteful,
inhumane, unworkable, ridiculously expensive and otherwise bankrupt.