SHIFT ENERGY FROM FAILED WAR ON DRUGS TO FIGHTING TERRORISM

There is little good news from the anti-terror front these days. The
whereabouts of Osama bin Laden are still unknown; the entrenched Washington
bureaucracy is fighting the new proposal for a Cabinet-level homeland
defense department; and al-Qaida has regrouped to foment jihad in Kashmir,
the area hotly contested by two new nuclear powers, India and Pakistan.

In other words, world affairs remain depressing.

Still, there was this small notice mixed in with recent news about
reorganizing and retooling the FBI: The agency will scale back its efforts
in the so-called war on drugs. It comes as a relief - a bit of good news -
that the FBI has shifted its priorities away from corner crackheads and
petty methamphetamine dealers. With terrorists threatening to explode dirty
bombs, spread smallpox and put cyanide in the water supply, it seems silly
for a major law enforcement agency to expend its precious resources hunting
down drug offenders.

The war on drugs, which always amounted to a war on drug users, has long
been a form of official terrorism - an overzealous but unimaginative effort
to stop irresponsible Americans from abusing their own bodies. Much like
Prohibition, the war on drugs has created more problems than it has solved,
incarcerating hundreds of thousands of nonviolent Americans and
guaranteeing a black market, which, in turn, has sparked an epidemic of
violence.

Had there not been hefty profits in selling banned substances, drug gangs
would not have sprung up to sell them and to war with each other as they
fought over turf. Similarly, there would be no South American cocaine
cartels, which have earned enough profits from narco-trafficking to
purchase armies to destabilize their native lands.

This seems as good a time as any for the White House and Congress to
quietly end the war on drugs. There is no great enthusiasm for it among
average American voters.

While it would be politically risky for any formal announcement of
retrenchment - and even riskier to legalize banned substances - the war on
terror provides plenty of cover for scaling back. For one thing, billions
more will be needed to safeguard American soil from terrorists. What better
place to get it than from the money set aside for punitive anti-drug
efforts - from police raids to prison beds? The entire budget of the Drug
Enforcement Administration, which has grown from $65 million in 1972 to
$1.8 billion this year, could be shifted to homeland defense.

With the nation's federal law enforcement agencies concentrating on
terrorism, the abuse of illegal narcotics could be confronted logically, as
a public health problem. If America made a serious commitment to drug
treatment and rehabilitation, rather than incarceration, our streets might
actually be safer. The violence of the drug war has largely been an
unintended consequence of the law enforcement effort to squelch drug sales.

That's not to say that major drug cartels would disappear if police stopped
going after petty drug dealers. As long as there is money to be made from
illegal drugs, criminal enterprises will hang around to reap the profits.
The biggest and most dangerous of those criminal enterprises should always
be in the gun sights of law enforcement officials.

But shifting money from the drug war to the war on terror will also
interrupt some of those drug cartels. As the U.S. Customs Service tightens
borders to stop Islamist terrorists, inspecting packages, trucks, trains
and container ships, it will inevitably stop more shipments of illegal
drugs. So why not beef up Customs with money from the DEA?

After more than 40 years of trying to stop Americans from using illegal
narcotics - wasting billions of dollars and countless lives in the process
- - U.S. politicians and policy-makers ought to be ready for a new strategy.
The war on terror has brought precious few blessings, but the opportunity
to back away from the war on drugs is one.