LEGALIZING DRUGS IS TANTAMOUNT TO SURRENDER

ON a recent summer tour through south London, I saw the future of drug
legalization. A young couple injected heroin inside the filthy ruins of an
abandoned building. In this working-class neighborhood, residents weave in
and out of crowded sidewalks, trying to avoid making eye contact with
dealers who openly push heroin, marijuana and crack.

Scotland Yard aggressively targets international drug traffickers, and I
applaud its strong overall anti-drug policy. But last year, a local police
commander initiated a pilot program in which people caught possessing
marijuana are warned rather than arrested. Often, they're just ignored. In
news reports and my interviews, residents criticize the program for
bringing more drug dealers, petty criminals and more drug use.

The one-year Lambeth pilot ended Aug. 1, but Britain has announced it will
relax the country's marijuana laws. That move has given fuel to those in
the United States who believe we should follow suit. Some have called for
the outright legalization of marijuana. People could buy dope over the
counter, as they do in the red-light district of Amsterdam.

What these legalization advocates do not talk about are the disturbing
problems that people in Lambeth lived with every day. They ignore the young
people addicted to drugs. They ignore the serious problems that countries
such as the Netherlands are experiencing -- problems leading them to
reconsider liberal drug laws.

The culture of drug use and acceptance in the Netherlands has played a role
in that country's becoming the world's top producer of Ecstasy. It's
interesting that, in a 2001 study, the British Home Office found that
violent crime and property crime increased in the late 1990s in every
wealthy country except the United States. No doubt effective drug
enforcement had a part in declining crime in the United States.

Maybe it's time Europeans looked to America's drug policy as their model.
Our approach -- tough drug laws coupled with effective education programs
and compassionate treatment -- is having success. It's a myth that there's
been no progress in our anti-drug effort. To the contrary, there's been
remarkable success. Overall drug use in the United States is down by more
than a third since the late 1970s. That's 9.5 million fewer people using
illegal drugs.

This is not to say we have done enough. Drugs are still readily available,
and a new National Household Survey on Drug Abuse shows that American kids
are increasingly using drugs such as Ecstasy. As long as we have despair,
poverty and frustration, as long as we have teenage rebellion, we're going
to have problems with drugs. But we must keep in mind our success and also
keep some perspective about U.S. drug use. Less than 5 percent of the
population uses illegal drugs. That's 16 million regular users of all
illegal drugs, compared with 66 million tobacco users and 109 million
alcohol users.

Emerging drug threats such as Ecstasy and methamphetamine are going to
require even more resolve and innovation. We need a renewed dedication by
all Americans to help our kids stay away from the misery and addiction of
drugs. In fighting drugs, we do have new ideas: from drug courts to
community coalitions; from more investment in education to more effective
treatment; from drug testing in the workplace to drug counselors in
schools. These are ideas that work.

What doesn't work is legalization. In 1975, Alaska's Supreme Court held
that under that state's constitution, an adult could possess marijuana for
personal consumption at home.

The court's ruling became a green light for marijuana use. A 1988
University of Alaska survey showed that the state's teenagers used
marijuana at a rate more than twice the national average for their age
group. The report also showed a frequency of marijuana use that suggested
it wasn't experimental but was a well-incorporated practice. Fed up with
this experiment, Alaska's residents voted in 1990 to recriminalize the
possession of marijuana. But 15 years of legalization left its mark --
increased drug use by a generation of our youth.

Legalizing drugs is simply a surrender. It's giving up on the hope of a
drug-free future for our next generation. It's writing off those still in
the grip of addiction and despair. Isn't every life worth fighting for?

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Asa Hutchinson is director of the Drug Enforcement Administration. He wrote
this for the Washington Post.