CHANGE DRUG LAWS IN U.S.

Europeans Know That Hard-Line Drug Policy Actually Fuels Crime

One of the many challenges facing a post-Taliban coalition government is
the corrupting influence of drug trafficking.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material used
to make heroin. According to the State Department, both the Taliban and the
Northern Alliance have financed their activities by taxing the opium trade.
A recent State Department report blames the Afghan drug trade for increased
levels of global terrorism and notes that the production of opium
"undermines the rule of law by generating large amounts of cash,
contributing to regional money-laundering and official corruption."

Just as alcohol prohibition did in the early 1900s, the modern-day drug war
subsidizes organized crime. Marijuana, an easily grown weed, is literally
worth its weight in gold in U.S. cities. In Colombia, the various armed
factions waging civil war are financially dependent on America's drug war.
The illicit trade keeps prices high and a cartel reaps the profits. While
U.S. politicians ignore the precedent of alcohol prohibition, Europeans are
instituting harm reduction, a public health alternative that seeks to
minimize the damage associated with both drug use and drug prohibition.

On the cutting edge of harm reduction, Switzerland's heroin maintenance
trials have been shown to reduce drug-related disease, death and crime
among chronic addicts. Modeled after U.S. methadone-maintenance programs
pioneered in New York, the trials are being replicated in Germany, Spain
and the Netherlands.

In England, where more than 90 percent of heroin comes from Afghanistan,
the Association of Chief Police Officers is hoping to break the link
between heroin and crime by re-instituting heroin maintenance. The practice
of prescribing heroin to addicts was standard in England from the 1920s to
the 1960s. In response to U.S. pressure, prescription heroin maintenance
was discontinued in 1971. The loss of a controlled distribution system and
subsequent creation of an unregulated illicit market led the number of
heroin addicts to skyrocket from fewer than 2,000 in 1970 to roughly 50,000
today. England's top cops say that the drug war is part of the problem. A
spike in street prices leads desperate heroin addicts to increase criminal
activity to feed their habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime; it fuels
crime.

Portugal has decriminalized all drug consumption in order to shift scarce
resources into treatment. Based on findings that prisons transmit violent
habits rather than reduce them, a majority of European Union countries have
decriminalized soft drugs such as marijuana. Switzerland is now on the
verge of taxing and regulating the sale of marijuana to adults.

Acknowledging the social reality of marijuana use, pragmatic Swiss
policymakers argue that taking control of the most popular illicit drug out
of the hands of organized crime will reduce exposure to heroin and other
hard drugs.

America isn't likely to tax and regulate the sale of marijuana any time
soon, much less institute heroin maintenance, because politicians here are
afraid to appear "soft on crime." But they wind up supporting a $50 billion
war on consensual vices that finances organized crime at home and
terrorists abroad. According to many drug-policy experts, U.S. insistence
on the prohibition model is the single biggest obstacle to reducing
Afghanistan's reliance on the opium crop as a means of generating hard
currency.

Robert Sharpe is a program officer with the Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy
Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Washington.