CRIMINALIZATION OF PERSONAL BEHAVIOR CROWDS PRISONS

As we win the war in Iraq, we should take a moment to consider another war
here at home, a war we are losing and will always lose: the drug war. The
number of people incarcerated in America passed the 2 million mark last
year and continues to climb even as violent crime rates go down. Almost 60
percent of prisoners serving time in federal facilities are there for drug
violations -- often minor ones. This is a sorry situation that we have
brought upon ourselves in a puritanical quest to control personal behavior,
albeit a behavior we abhor.

President Nixon launched the war on drugs in the 1970s, with Elvis Presley
as his poster boy. Presley died addicted to drugs, and drug use has
remained constant despite the government's best efforts. We have a
puritanical streak that goes back to our founding fathers, which is why in
some states' sodomy laws are still on the books and prostitution, with rare
exception, remains unlawful and unregulated.

Imagine the outcry if the government made smoking illegal. Thousands of
Americans succumb each year to tobacco-related illness, yet we recognize as
a society that outlawing smoking would never succeed. Criminalizing drug
use fills the nation's prisons but has failed to end the demand.

America's drug laws have been out of control for the last 15 years, since
the death from overdose of University of Maryland basketball star Len Bias.
In response to his death, Congress rushed to pass draconian drug laws, and
the Justice Department set aside money to encourage local communities to
crack down on drug use. As a result of this heavy-handed war on drugs,
prisons have become big business. Drive north from Dallas and every 50 or
75 miles you will see a concrete structure surrounded by a parking lot
crowded with the cars of the people who work there. It is the only secure
employment in the economically stricken area. A bill before the Texas
legislature proposes cutting the school week from five to four days to plug
the state's budget deficit and pay for its prisons. This is public policy
gone haywire.

To boost the number of arrests and justify the funds, law enforcement
officials routinely stage drug stings that can snare dozens of people at a
time. One particularly egregious example occurred in 1999 in Tulia, Texas,
a dirt-poor town in the Texas panhandle where 46 people, almost all
African-American men, were swept up in one evening by an over-zealous
undercover agent.

Thanks to the vigilance of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the case was
reopened this year and a Texas judge recommended overturning the sentences.
The undercover agent had acted alone and could produce no corroborating
evidence for the alleged drug buys he recorded. He admitted in testimony
that he regularly used racial epithets in dealing with Tulia's minority
population. The case goes next to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals,
which doesn't have to accept the lower court judge's recommendation. But
given the publicity the case has received and the poignant stories of the
lives ruined by the arrests and long sentences (which, in several cases,
exceeded 20 years), it is likely the citizens of Tulia will be vindicated.

Ease the nation's drug laws and the prison population would shrink
dramatically. And now is the time to do it. The states are strapped for
money and politicians can make the case they're freeing first-time drug
offenders to make room for violent criminals.

Incarcerating minor drug offenders doesn't make us safer. People should
know about the dangers of drugs just as they do the health risks associated
with smoking. Choosing to ignore the dangers is foolish, but not criminal.

Prediction: The criminalization of personal behavior will eventually end.

JACK ANDERSON, with Douglas Cohn, Eleanor Clift, Douglas Cohn and Lee
Cullum, writes a column for United Feature Syndicate.