THE WAR ON DRUGS VS. THE WAR ON TERRORISM

We knew terrorists would slaughter innocent people by the thousands, but
who could have imagined the full depths of their depravity? We found out
last week when John Ashcroft announced that people sympathetic to Al Qaeda
have been trying to finance their operations not through bake sales or
bingo nights, but by selling illegal drugs.

Now, the attorney general said, "the war on terrorism has been joined with
the war on illegal drug use." What Ashcroft fails to notice is that the war
on illegal drug use doesn't advance the war on terrorism. Just the
opposite: It affords a continuing windfall to our enemies. In that respect,
Al Qaeda can be grateful to Ashcroft for preserving what he called the
"deadly nexus between terrorism and drug trafficking."

By his account, the government foiled two plots involving
drugs-for-weapons. Two Pakistanis and a naturalized American were arrested
for allegedly trying to swap large quantities of heroin and hashish for
four Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which were supposedly going to be
shipped to Al Qaeda.

In addition, he said, the government grabbed four men who were offering
cash and cocaine in exchange for 9,000 assault rifles, 53 million rounds of
ammunition, and other instruments of mayhem. These were to be used by a
right-wing terrorist group in Colombia.

Whether the men arrested had ties to actual terrorists is not clear. But
any jihadists who need a continuing stream of income can certainly find no
better business than drug trafficking. It offers big profits, and it
rewards those skills in criminality that they have worked so hard to acquire.

This bust dovetails with the ad campaign mounted by the White House Office
of National Drug Control Policy. You know, the one that introduces Dan, who
bought marijuana from a dealer who got it from a cartel that killed an
entire family for getting in the way. "Drug money supports terrible
things," says the voiceover. "If you buy drugs, you might too."

The message we get from the federal government is simple: Drugs are
intrinsically evil, so evildoers are involved with them. But Ashcroft and
his colleagues never seem to consider the real connection between drug
trafficking and violent thuggery and how we might break it. To do so would
force them to reconsider everything the government has been doing about
drugs for decades.

Back in the 1920s, you may recall, organized crime was involved in
manufacturing, smuggling and selling a different mind-altering substance:
alcohol. But if terrorists today have no interest in peddling bootleg gin,
it's not because Islam frowns on drinking. It's because there's no real
profit left, because the stuff is legally available. Al Capone and Co.
couldn't survive in the liquor trade without Prohibition.

Likewise, the war on drugs is the only thing that makes cocaine trafficking
commercially enticing to the enemies of civilization. If stuffed animals
were banned, they'd sell teddy bears, and they'd make good money doing it.
The continuing efforts of governments to eradicate drugs make the business
risky. That drives out everyone but hard-core criminals comfortable taking
such risks. It also inflates profits to levels never dreamed of in normal
markets, stimulating the interest of anyone not constrained by reverence
for the law.

Police and prosecutors may try to put all the drug dealers in jail, but the
strategy defeats itself. The fewer drug sellers, the higher the prices they
can charge. The higher the prices, the more attractive it is to sell drugs,
and the more people will want to do it. So every time police take one
heroin merchant off the streets, another springs up to take his place.

The Taliban prospered for years from being the world's chief supplier of
opium. Then, a couple of years ago, they decided to stamp out poppy
farming--a step that prompted not only praise from the Bush administration
but opened the way for millions of dollars in U.S. financial aid to
Afghanistan. Is that what Ashcroft would call a joining of the war on
terror and the war on drugs? In fact, there's no way to join the two
successfully. The way to deprive terrorists and other criminal gangs of
sustenance is to legalize and regulate the drugs we have tried to eliminate.

Instead, we keep pouring law enforcement dollars into efforts that won't
put an end to drug use but will assure profits to traffickers, including
people who are trying to kill us. The drug war supports terrible things.
When our leaders persist in it, they do too.