DRUG WAR CRITIC VISITS SPRINGS

Former Princeton professor says marijuana should be legalized, taxed

A well-known critic of America's expensive war against drugs was in
Colorado Springs this week, campaigning for a cease-fire.

Ethan Nadelman, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy
Alliance, said that since 1980, "tens of millions have been spent trying to
stop the flow of drugs. Is it any harder to get drugs?"

For the past dozen years, Nadelman, a former professor at Princeton
University, has been a critic of the drug war. He's been writing, lecturing
and regularly appearing on television issues programs, trying to highlight
the drug war's costs in human and financial terms.

Nadelman said every administration in the White House has gotten it wrong
by focusing on polls showing how many youths are using drugs.

"The important bottom line is how much death, crime and disease resulted
from drug use," he told a Colorado College audience Thursday.

"If you can reduce marijuana use by 3 percent by locking up 30,000 people,
is that success?" he asked rhetorically.

Not only are too many people getting sick or going to jail, Nadelman said,
but the wrong people have led the debate.

"Who is allowed to speak about drugs in America today? It's either the
people who never used drugs or those who used them and screwed up. Imagine
going to a business school and only being taught by people who never ran a
business or those who did run one and went bankrupt."

Marijuana, Nadelman said, should be legalized and taxed. Abuse of more
dangerous drugs should be treated as a disease, the same way alcoholism is
handled, he said.

Comparing drug use with sex, Nadelman said many teens will experiment and
that advocating abstinence is unrealistic.

"There's a part that comes after 'Just say no,'" he said, "and it's 'Just
say know: Know what you're doing."

Nadelman recalled a federal goal that drug use could be eradicated by 1995.

"A drug-free America by 1995? It makes you think they were smoking," he joked.

Nadelman asserted that "there has never been a drug-free society."
Indigenous peoples worldwide have always enjoyed altered states, he said:
"They figure out that if you peel that bark or eat that mushroom, it's the
basis for a new religion."

Instead of trying to wipe out drug use, Nadelman said it would be more
realistic for Americans to see that "we will always have drugs. We need to
learn how to live with these things."

It's fair to place a portion of the blame for the spread of AIDS on the
widespread refusal to provide needle-exchange programs, Nadelman said.

Nadelman said 500,000 people are in prison on drug convictions.

"We lock up more people for drugs than the entire European Union locks up
for everything," he said.

In Colorado, according to the Legislative Council, the number of those
incarcerated for drug offenses has increased by 476 percent in the last 10
years.

More than half the 3,200 drug-offense inmates are in prison for drug
possession, not for dealing drugs.

The Department of Corrections says keeping those inmates in prison costs
Colorado taxpayers about $41 million a year.

A drug war poll

In a September poll of registered voters in Colorado, the Boulder- based
Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition found:

83 percent of Colorado voters say America is losing the war on drugs.

88 percent say drug imports won't be slowed until demand in the nation is
reduced.

59 percent say drug addiction is primarily a health problem; 11 percent say
it is a crime.

74 percent support increased spending on drug treatment.

21 percent favor incarceration for drug possession.

85 percent say someone convicted of drug possession should be allowed to
remain in the community as long as they do not commit other crimes.