AMERICA'S LONELY DRUG WAR

With the confirmation of John Walters as the new drug czar, the US is
committing itself to a punishment-based War on Drugs -- even as most of its
allies are declaring cease-fires.

In America's cities, punishment remains the rule in the War on Drugs.

Last December 5th marked the 68th anniversary of the effective end of
Prohibition, drawing to close this nation's "noble experiment" with
criminalizing alcohol. So it seems ironic that it was also the day on which
the United States Senate confirmed John P. Walters as the new director of
the Office of National Drug Policy -- the nation's drug czar.

Walters, who spent much of the 90s working in various positions at the
federal office he will now lead, has a track record of opposing measures
like syringe exchanges while supporting large-scale incarceration for drug
users and military action to stop drug production in places like Colombia
and Peru. His appointment is the clearest sign yet that the Bush
administration is committed to a punishment-based approach to the problems
caused by illegal drug, undeterred by a growing consensus both at home and
abroad that the War on Drugs is as ill-conceived as the war on alcohol
nearly seven decades ago.

Over the past five years, Americans have voted in favor of nearly every
significant state initiative to reform drug-policies, from legalizing
medical marijuana in Arizona, to banning the seizure of assets of accused
but unconvicted drug dealers in Oregon, to last year's Proposition 36 in
California which mandates treatment instead of incarceration for drug
users. In most cases, that public support came despite strong opposition
from the federal government.

Our allies in Europe have gone much further. The US has had no firmer
friend in Europe than the United Kingdom. But even as the UK has enlisted
wholeheartedly in the war on terror, it has taken steps towards declaring
peace in the War on Drugs.

In late October, Home Secretary David Blunkett announced that the British
government will soon abandon the policy of arresting people for marijuana
possession. Blunkett also indicated that the New Labour government is ready
to discuss expanding the medically-supervised distribution of heroin to
addicts, while some Labour members in Parliament have called for reducing
the penalties for the manufacture, sale and possession of Ecstasy.

"The drug war, in Western Europe at least, is essentially over," says Paul
Flynn, a Labour member of Parliament since 1987 . "Our course is
irreversibly moving toward legalized, regulated markets in so-called soft
drugs, availability of drugs like opiates for those who are addicted
through various health systems, and a more pragmatic approach to substance
abuse generally throughout Europe."

Far from being trendsetters in this regard, Britain trails every European
Union nation other than Sweden in moving away form criminally-enforced
prohibition, according to a survey by the European Non-Governmental
Organizations Council on Drugs and Development, an umbrella group of
advocacy organizations. Holland led the shift starting back in the 1970s,
when it "normalized" the cannabis trade -- meaning that over the counter
sales were tolerated, though not exactly legal. Dutch policymakers hoped
that, by separating out the market for "soft" drugs like marijuana from
that of "hard" drugs like cocaine and heroin, marijuana users would be less
likely to come into contact with more addictive and dangerous substances.
That approach seems to have yielded results.

In its latest annual report on drug use, released last month, the European
Union's European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction found that
Britain and Ireland rank highest among EU nations in per capita use of
cannabis, amphetamines and cocaine. Per capita usage in the Netherlands,
the report indicates, is significantly lower. The incidence of intravenous
and long-term regular use of opiates, cocaine or amphetamines is also two
to three times higher in the UK than in The Netherlands, the report indicates.

Due in part to the success of the Dutch model, most Western European
countries have over the past five years begun to soften their approach to
personal use of most drugs. Spain and Germany no longer arrest people for
possession of "soft" drugs such as marijuana, and this year, Portugal
essentially decriminalized drug possession altogether.

More controversially, some EU countries are experimenting with programs
under which registered addicts can receive legal, measured doses of heroin,
along with other health and social services. Switzerland has established
such programs as part of its overall health policy, and the Netherlands,
Spain, Germany and Denmark are launching pilot programs.

Several European countries are also testing the benefits of safe injection
rooms, places where IV drug users can shoot up under some level of medical
supervision. Although the data is still inconclusive, several studies
suggest that these facilitites can help reduce the incidence of fatal
overdoses and syringe sharing. In Frankfurt, for instance, where injection
rooms have been open since 1994, city officials report that overdose
fatalities declined from 147 in 1992 to 26 in 1999. There are now injection
rooms operating in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. City
officials in Vancouver, Canada are also considering opening an injection room.

In the US, of course, things are different -- as Walters' nomination makes
clear.

"In Europe, the drug problem is viewed as a collection of consequences --
AIDS, crime, addiction -- which must be dealt with. Not so here, where we
tend to look at drug use and intoxication as a moral issue," says Eric
Sterling, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Criminal Justice Policy
Foundation "We justify the most destructive and least effective of our drug
policies as somehow sending an important message to our children."

Indeed, the man set to become America's newest drug czar has consistently
cited moral objections in opposing approaches favoring treatment. In 1996,
he declared that he opposed syringe exchanges on moral grounds, ignoring
data from major national and international health organizations --
including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical
Association, and the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS -- indicating
that exchange programs reduce the spread of deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS
and hepatitis, without increasing drug use.

Walters has also told Congress that he believes foreign drug interdiction
programs are "cheap and effective," even though a 1994 federal Government
Accounting Office study found that "the supply of illegal drugs reaching
the United States via Central America continues virtually uninterrupted,
despite years of US drug interdiction efforts." A study the same year by
the RAND Corporation, a private research institute, showed that monies
spent on treatment are twenty- three times more effective at lowering drug
use than those spent on interdiction.

In 1996 Walters, then the president of a private think tank, urged Congress
to increase support for a Peruvian policy of shooting suspected drug planes
out of the sky, rejecting experts' concerns that the practice would put
innocent travellers at risk. Last April, US support for that program was
withdrawn after the Peruvian military shot down a plane carrying an
American missionary and her daughter -- but no drugs.

Walters has also defended the practice of jailing drug offenders, rejecting
arguments that too many Americans are imprisoned for simple drug possession
and that drug sentences are too long as "among the great urban myths of our
time." Walters clings to his beliefs despite the fact that the US has the
highest incarceration rate of any country on earth. Thanks largely to the
kinds of policies Walters would continue, the US holds more prisoners for
drug crimes than are imprisoned in Western Europe for all crimes combined,
according to the British Home Office and the US Bureau of Justice Statistics.

By 1933, 14 years after its inception, it was clear that alcohol
prohibition was a disaster. Crime and homicide rates had increased. Machine
gun-toting gangsters had become counter-culture icons. Impure black market
alcohol was causing blindess, disease and death. Governmental and police
corruption was rampant. Children easily obtained alcohol, drinking out of
hip flasks, the status symbol of the time.

Nevertheless, to its champions, Prohibition was seen as indistinguishable
from society's "message" that excessive drink was a bad and a dangerous
thing. How could we stand firm against the sins of drunkenness, spousal and
child abuse, violence and wasted promise, if our laws permitted the legal
sale of such deadly stuff? What we needed, according to Prohibitionists,
was to re-double our efforts. Those who sought to overturn Prohibition, the
hardliners argued, were giving up on our nation, on our quest for an
alcohol-free society, on our children.

"We represent here to-day not only organizations of women, but, as a whole,
we represent the home, the school, the church, and we stand firmly for no
amendment to the eighteenth amendment ... but rather a strengthening," Mrs.
Henry Peabody, President of the Women's National Committee for Law
Enforcement, told the Senate Judiary Committee on Prohibition in 1926. "We
stand for strict law enforcement. ... It is never the policy of a good
mother or teacher to say the children are disobedient -- therefore let us
give in to them and let them do as they like."

How little things change. Last month, William Bennet, Walters' former boss
at ONDCP, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal urging Walters' speedy
confirmation and accusing the Clinton administration -- which oversaw a
doubling of the drug war budget and record levels of arrests and
incarceration -- of "all but giving up" on our children. It is time, said
Bennet, not to "go soft" but to "push back."

Today, around the world, in England, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Canada,
a new consensus is emerging. It is one which sees substance abuse as a
health issue, rather than a criminal justice issue. It seeks pragmatic
solutions to the problems of addiction, crime and AIDS. Here at home,
voters are making a statement at the ballot box that moral absolutism might
be a fine opinion, but it makes lousy law. Walters and the Bush
administration, however, have yet to get the message. What do you think?