ANTI-TERROR MOBILIZATION MAY LEAD TO MORE ABUSIVE DRUG WAR

As the United States wages a war on two fronts, against both terrorism and
drugs, Ethan Nadelmann poses a fair question of priorities. "Which white
powder do we want the government looking for?" asks Nadelmann, executive
director of the Lindesmith Center, a nonprofit drug policy organization. "Do
we want them focused on anthrax or do we want them focused on cocaine?"

Our profligate $50 billion-per-year drug war is certainly diverting
potential resources from our fight against terrorism. But what worries
Nadelmann even more is the way these two wars are converging. He believes
that in the near future all of the law enforcement and military
infrastructure we have built to investigate and prevent terrorist activities
will be incorporated into the war on drugs.

"The question becomes whether, down the road a few years, when we have in
place a new, very well-funded, large-scale . . . security apparatus focused
on counterterrorism, will pressures begin to emerge to refocus it at the war
on drugs -- where what the government will be looking for will not be
hundreds of people (terrorists) who might do massive damage to a large
number of people, but millions of people (drug users) who could potentially
do little damage to anyone but themselves," Nadelmann says.

Already there are signs that the drug war and the war on terrorism are seen
by our national leaders as one and the same. In September, after the World
Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert
announced the formation of a new task force to combat drug trafficking. "The
illegal drug trade is the financial engine that fuels many terrorist
organizations around the world, including Osama bin Laden," Hastert said.

Actually, one need only keep up with the news to know that the outlandish
profits generated by black market drugs are used to support terrorist
campaigns. Hence the term "narco-terrorist."

The most obvious examples are within our own hemisphere. Colombia is a
nation ripped apart by its high-volume drug trade, the profits of which have
gone to underwrite leftist rebel movements as well as right-wing
paramilitary death squads. Similarly, illicit drug profits supported the
Shining Path guerrilla insurgency in Peru.

The United Nations estimates that the world trade in illicit drugs generates
about $400 billion every year -- plenty of money to send a dozen men to
flight school.

The government could plug this money spigot almost overnight, but
unforgivably chooses not to. All we would have to do is move our
prohibitionist drug war into more sensible territory, such as legalizing
marijuana, and decriminalizing and regulating the use of harder substances.
Ending alcohol prohibition showed us that organized crime will get squeezed
out as profits plummet and legitimate businesses enter the market.

This is obvious to nearly everyone but our political leaders. The American
people have pretty much had it with the zero-tolerance drug war, as evinced
by the widespread public support for medical marijuana initiatives and the
California initiative to put nonviolent drug offenders in treatment rather
than prison.

So, despite the way our policy of drug prohibition provides a source of
funds for overseas terrorist activity, the U.S. will not cede an inch.
Instead, we will continue to arrest more than half a million people for
simple marijuana possession every year and to raid medical marijuana
facilities regardless of the people's expressed will.

The nomination of narco-hawk John Walters for drug czar is a signal from
President Bush that no thoughtful, commonsensical approaches to the drug
problem will be entertained.

But what is most chilling is the way the new police powers of extra-judicial
detention and surveillance, justified through the need to combat terrorism,
will inevitably leach over into drug enforcement.

Nadelmann makes the astute point that, just as voters and the courts were
beginning to draw limits around the way law enforcement could invade privacy
or dispense with due process in pursuit of the drug war, the war on
terrorism emerged with its no-holds-barred exigencies.

For those who think government power over the individual should have
constraints, Sisyphus' rock has rolled down the mountain once again.