FUTILE DRUG WAR

"Deep (state) budget crisis dominates as lawmakers convene" reads the
front-page headline in the Jan. 12 Post and Courier. Then on Jan. 18, a
report lists major crime arrests for Charleston County, with narcotics
arrests totaling 3,611 in 2002, nearly four times more than the next
highest arrest category, which is criminal domestic violence. And on Jan.
31, another front-page headline: "Jail jam plagues Charleston County."

To our politicians and lawmakers, I say, please connect the dots! The
illegality of some drugs (of course, not the alcohol and tobacco most of us
prefer), has contributed enormously to both drug-related crime and our
state budget crisis. We lock people up in large numbers for non-violent,
drug-related offenses, at a cost of at least $20,000 per year per each
inmate. At the same time, we lack money in South Carolina for health care,
education and other needs government should address.

Charleston County Council must deal with a nine-year-old county detention
center built to hold 661 prisoners, but now containing 1,444 inmates and
rising. The county must spend $37 million to build a new jail predicted to
be full of prisoners the day it opens.

The S.C. Department of Corrections wants to release up to 4,000 nonviolent
prisoners held for various offenses before their sentences are up, as some
other states have recently done to resolve their budget crises, but our
state lawmakers resist this idea. At the same time, the Corrections
Department's annual budget has been cut about 23 percent, the deepest cut
in a prison agency in the United States.

When is our government, instead of the drug dealers, going to regulate and
distribute all narcotics, and hold people accountable for offenses they
commit under the influence of drugs, just as with alcohol? When are we
going to offer treatment on demand for all drug addiction, a strategy that
the Rand Corporation says is seven times more effective than incarceration
in stopping drug use, dollar for dollar?

When are our politicians going to have the courage to recognize that the
expense of this futile drug war is robbing law-abiding, tax-paying citizens
of government services they deserve and need? The answer to these questions
is clear: Only when we urge our lawmakers to decriminalize all drugs. Only
when citizens give permission to politicians to address drug use and abuse
with education and treatment, not imprisonment.

Sharon Fratepietro