DRUG PROHIBITION GONE ON LONG ENOUGH

It is precisely because prohibition increases the risks from drugs to our
children that many so vehemently oppose the drug war. Good intentions are
no justification for terrible results.

When the head of the Scotland Yard anti-drugs squad, Edward Ellison, retired
in 1998, he wrote a long article for the London Daily Mail. His two themes:

"Quite obviously, prohibition has failed. I saw the misery that drug abuse
can cause. I saw at first hand the squalor, the wrecked lives, the deaths.
I've seen too many youngsters die. I'm determined my children don't get
hooked -- which is why I want all drugs legalized.

"The pushers earn my hatred: politicians who are too cowardly to think, or
to promote public debate, earn my contempt."

Who says attempts to stop supply do nothing to protect children? Jack Lawn,
head of the DEA and the man in charge of stopping supply for five years
under President Ronald Reagan.

Who says arresting dealers does nothing to protect children?

Volney Brown, the nation's leading prosecutor of drug dealers (1,100 in 18
months) under President Richard Nixon.

Who says laws and prisons are no deterrent to use? The National Research
Council, selected recently by the White House to do the analysis: "Existing
research seems to indicate that there is little apparent relationship
between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use and the prevalence or
frequency of use, and that perceived legal risk explains very little in the
variance of individual drug use."

The death knell for alcohol Prohibition came when Pauline Sabin, the first
woman to serve on the Republican National Committee, left the party to
organize the mothers of America in 1929 to lead the fight for repeal.

Historian David Kyvig notes, "spokeswomen expressed particular distress at
the effects of national prohibition on children and family life."

Far from being a "lunatic fringe," the critics of the drug war number many
of our most highly informed and respected citizens.

Anti-prohibitionists include media icons as disparate as Hugh Downs, Walter
Cronkite and Bill Buckley. The disgust of judges from coast to coast is
detailed by Judge James Gray in his book, subtitled, "A Judicial Indictment
of the War On Drugs."

The theoretical leaders of the reform movement are Milton Friedman, Nobel
Laureate, recently called a "hero" by President Bush and lauded by Alan
Greenspan as the most important economist of the century, and George
Schultz, whose acumen was so valued by Nixon and Reagan.

The aura of prohibition means punishment and not support for those who
develop a drug problem, so we lose still more of our young when teens are
too frightened to seek help for themselves or their friends. And it is
prohibition that has lured so many of our young into a life of crime, not
using drugs but selling drugs.

Prohibition provides the perfect negative role model, the dealer with money,
cars and women.

This is prohibition's gift to our children. To the well intended, wishful
thinkers who think the drug war is helpful: "Forgive them Father; they know
not what they do."

Jerry Epstein is president of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas.