NOELLE BUSH - EXAMPLE OF DRUG WAR'S FAILURE

Could we find a more vivid illustration of the conspicuous failure and
counterproductive nature of the War on Drugs than this?

Noelle Bush, daughter of Gov. Jeb Bush and niece of the president, was
caught with crack cocaine hidden in her shoe at a drug rehabilitation
facility, according to a Sept. 11 report in the Orlando Sentinel. Last
July, she was sentenced to jail time for possessing forbidden prescription
drugs at the same clinic.

Billions of dollars of investment in the drug war cannot keep illicit
substances out of rehabilitation facilities. Nor, for that matter, can law
enforcement authorities keep drugs out of prisons - despite concrete walls,
steel bars, razor wire and armed guards.

Prison walls are so porous that "it is commonly assumed that well over half
of the prison population regularly consumes some kind of drug, be it
alcohol, cannabis, amphetamines or heroin," according to Nick Flynn, deputy
director of the Prison Reform Trust. Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff
Arthur Solis gives a higher estimate: "Based on my experiences about 70
percent of inmates are in some way, shape, or form involved with drugs," he
told Ad Infinitum magazine.

The metaphors are powerful. A daughter of the country's most powerful
political family is ensnared in the politicians' own War on Drugs, yet her
family fails to see the larger meaning of her predicament. It is easier to
obtain hard drugs in jail than in a college dormitory, yet the government
thinks it can keep drugs from crossing the 2,067-mile Mexican border or the
5,526 miles between us and Canada.

While families in poor neighborhoods bear the heaviest burdens of the drug
war - turf wars among street gang members, endemic police corruption
(Denzel Washington's Oscar-winning crooked cop in "Training Day" was a
reflection of real life) and economic despondency - affluent and suburban
families, including the Kennedys, Bushes and Rockefellers among us, have
largely been spared the War on Drugs' collateral damage.

Jeb Bush, claiming the desire for family privacy, merely cloaks his own
obtuseness by telling Florida journalists: "In this case, I'm not a
governor - I'm a dad. And I just pray. That's all I can do," adding, "This
is a private issue as it relates to my daughter, myself and my wife."

It is not private. It is a very public matter with very public ramifications.

The message of Noelle Bush's troubles is simple: We need to rethink the War
on Drugs, starting by following the example of Canada, Britain, Portugal
and the Netherlands (among other countries) and decriminalizing marijuana.
An initiative on the ballot this November in Nevada will show us what
voters - not politicians - really think about this proposal. If past
experience is any guide, the voters will send a resounding signal to their
legislators that drug laws must be reformed, and the law should be
rewritten to reflect reason rather than raw emotion, logic and facts rather
than propaganda.

Arrest, interdiction and punishment have all proven useless against the
laws of economics and human nature. We should have learned the lesson
during alcohol Prohibition, which in the 1920s created markets for
organized crime, drove up the murder rate and laid the foundations for
later criminal enterprises in gambling, prostitution and drugs. Banning a
desired product or service always - always - generates incentives to
providers who are willing to ignore the law to make a profit. Disputes
among black-market entrepreneurs are settled with gunshots rather than with
lawsuits. And the losers are all of us.

The War on Drugs casts a wide and dangerous net. Our constitutional
liberties are eroded by law enforcement agencies eager to skirt the
protections of the Bill of Rights so they can "score" another big arrest.
Anyone with a bank account is saddled with invasive regulations that
discard financial privacy to prevent "money laundering." Profits from the
international trade in cocaine and heroin - profits multiplied by the
drugs' mere illegality - finance terrorists on five continents.

The time has come to say no to the War on Drugs.

Gov. Bush and President Bush should listen attentively to their fellow
Republican, Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, who told his state's
legislature last year that "we need to reform our drug policies." Johnson
explained: "We need policies that reflect what we know about drug addition
rather than policies that seek to punish instead of help. We need a
humanitarian approach. The days of the 'drug war' waged against our people
should come to an end."