MARLINGA ABANDONS HIS GET-TOUGH POLICY ON HEROIN

Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga has ended his own small-scale
campaign in the war on terror.

Marlinga has called off his crackdown on the Taliban, or at least on the
local drug peddlers he said he believed may have -- wittingly or not --
helped finance the former Afghan rulers.

Last fall, to the snickers of some defense attorneys, Marlinga announced to
his staff a no-mercy policy for anyone caught selling or possessing heroin
in the county.

At the time, Marlinga said recently, taking any action to help eradicate
the terrorism responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks seemed reasonable, even
if the odds of finding links to suspected terrorism mastermind Osama bin
Laden or his Al Qaeda group were remote in suburban Macomb County. Plus,
Marlinga was seeing a bigger picture.

"If this became kind of a national policy . . . then the odds of tripping
over somebody who actually did have Al Qaeda ties would be pretty high," he
said.

And much was being said and published then about heroin as an occasional
funding source for the oppressive regime in Afghanistan, where farmers
cultivate narcotic-producing poppies. So Marlinga issued a memo: If the
crime suspects have ties to heroin, punish them to the fullest.

No exceptions, the memo said, unless a suspect testifies against the
Taliban rulers or Al Qaeda.

The policy evoked criticism from defense attorneys, whose barbs four months
later are buoyed by the Taliban's quick fall to military might.

Said lawyer William Swor: "One can admire Mr. Marlinga's intention," but "I
think it bears no relationship to the impact of heroin in the community. .
. . And certainly now that Al Qaeda and the Taliban seem to be on their
last legs, if they're standing at all, I don't see that there's any more
need for the policy."

Marlinga agreed last week, and now says that the policy is no more. No one
ended up becoming the poster child for the get-tough stance.

Drug enforcement experts say most heroin from Afghanistan ends up in
Europe. In Michigan, most of the heroin supply comes from South America.