THE DRUG CRISIS: ARRESTS MOUNT, PROBLEM WORSENS

The statistics on illegal drugs are troubling.

The stories behind them give rise to alarm.

At Marywood University on Monday, a panel of experts offered variations on
a single theme. While the number of drug arrests multiplies, they said, the
drug-related crisis appears to worsen.

Keynote speaker Kevin Zeese, president of Common Sense for Drug Policy in
Washington, D.C., presented this overview:

Since 1980, half a trillion dollars spent on America's drug war.

A record number of drug arrests.

2 million addicts behind bars.

A record number of drugs confiscated.

An increase in adolescent drug use.

And last year, a record number of overdose deaths.

In addition, cocaine and heroin, both highly addictive, are available
locally in purer form and at a cheaper price than decades before.

They are cheaper on the illegal market than alcohol is on the lawful store
shelves, Mr. Zeese said. The reason, he said, is to snare other users into
addiction's web.

Local adolescents are traveling to Philadelphia to buy in quantity, then
sell here, he said.

Overdose rates have soared. According to research compiled by Ernest
Drucker, Ph.D., between Jan. 1, 1998 and Dec. 30, 2002, overdose deaths in
Lackawanna and Luzerne counties jumped from 18 to 92 cases a year.

Dr. Drucker, professor and director of public health and policy research at
Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, N.Y., produced research
showing the rate of lethal overdose is higher in Lackawanna and Luzerne
counties than in the Bronx. In 2001, the two Northeastern Pennsylvania
counties had an overdose death rate of about 50 per 100,000 population,
while the Bronx had 18 per 100,000.

Mr. Zeese recommended less emphasis on arrests and more on treatment.

He recommended a local methadone clinic for heroin addicts and a shift in
public funds to provide better after-school programs that help children
maintain a positive self-image.

The message Mr. Zeese put forth goes against popular political opinion,
but, he insisted, implementing it would reduce drug use and drug-related crime.

Invited to Marywood by the school's criminal justice department, Mr. Zeese
is recognized as an authority on national drug issues.

Other panel members were U.S. Middle District Judge Thomas Vanaskie, Middle
District Chief Probation Officer Joseph Donahue and Michael Donahue,
program administrator of the Luzerne-Wyoming Counties Drug and Alcohol Program.

Criminal justice students, professors and others with a professional
interest in the subject composed the audience.

To a person, each agreed the nation's war on drugs has not been successful.

The root of the problem is money, Mr. Zeese said. The situation in Colombia
illustrates it. United States agents eradicated Colombia's drug crops, only
to have crops sprout elsewhere with a higher profit, he said.

He and others have been looking at ways other countries treat drug
problems. What they have found, he said, is that they address it as managers.

"We address it as moralizers," he said.

Yet drug use is lower in all of Europe than it is in the United States, he
said.

In this country, he said, more money is spent on prisons than on colleges.
Racial disparity puts more minorities behind bars, though most defendants
are white.

The racial data on arrests and imprisonment of blacks "is worse than
apartheid," he said.

Judge Vanaskie said the federal sentencing reform act of 1984, which
created mandatory sentencing guidelines, had a laudible goal, but
ultimately gave prosecutors more discretion than judges.

Now, he said, there seems to be a battle between the legislative and
judicial branches. Yet the drug cases seem to lend themselves to local
initiatives.

He, too, recognizes the racial disparity, he said.

"How can we do better?" Joseph Donohue asked. "Drug addiction causes
terrible problems. We're well-intentioned, but there is no magic bullet. We
need a concerted, integrated approach.

"We've swung like a pendulum. Twenty years ago, the emphasis was on
treatment. Then we went to the oversimplistic approach of punishment."

Michael Donohue advocated rehabilitation for users and punishment for the
profiteers. Methadone works and a local clinic is necessary, he said.

Mr. Zeese's solution, at least in part, is to treat the drug war as a
public health problem, stepping up rehabilitation programs and creating
programs such as needle exchanges, methadone clinics and some drug regulation.