TIME TO END WAR ON DRUGS

It is time to end the ridiculous, ineffectual War on Drugs in order to
concentrate on the very real War on Terrorism (though casting it as a war
is misleading and leads to ineffective activities like the bombing in
Afghanistan). The WOD is a civil war based more on moral hysteria than any
logic.

Why is a relatively nonlethal drug like marijuana illegal while alcohol, so
much more potent and potentially dangerous, is not? The argument that pot
leads to the harder stuff lies at the very root of why we have to stop this
losing campaign, now!

Sometime in the Sixties, Allen Ginsberg argued that making pot illegal was
promoting this very graduation. Ginsberg pointed out that lines of
distribution would be set up for the relatively benign pot along which,
later, harder and different drugs would flow. When I was in high school in
1966, 1967, most kids scored in the City, though there were a few ambitious
dealers who would buy a couple of dime bags and split them up to sell them
at home. Almost nobody did drugs.

In 1970, when I was home visiting from college, you could get any drug in
any quantity you wanted at the high school. Within a decade, this was true
of most schools in the country.

Even where you would least expect it. The lines of distribution, once
established, served all sorts of product.

Ignoring the moral and logical argument against the WOD, let's talk about
the tactical one. Specifically, the War on Drugs works in opposition to the
battle against terrorism.

Smuggling drugs is very, very lucrative.

This has made our borders porous because it is very worthwhile to figure
out how to penetrate them. Smuggling goes on in enormous quantities every
day. Obviously, even if all drugs were legal, all kinds of smuggling would
continue. But drugs -- easily among the most lucrative smuggled products --
and politics are already comfortable bedfellows. Internationally, in many
areas anti-government forces have long ago turned to the drug trade as a
source of revenue (the Northern Alliance comes to mind). Terrorists will
logically cultivate this relationship. Drug smuggling can provide both the
funds and the means for terrorists. There are networks of distribution set
up throughout the United States for drugs because there are so many drug
users and sympathizers. But how can these networks be perverted or imitated
or situated as decoys?

There are only so many wars a country should conduct on its own soil at the
same time.

This WOD has proven to be a long-term, expensive war against we the people
in which everyone loses.

Imagine, if tomorrow alcohol were made illegal and everyone who possessed a
bottle went to prison.

Ridiculous? We have filled our prisons with just such neighbors.

Which makes it harder to isolate the real criminals, those who pose an
ongoing danger to society. The world has changed.

Today is the day to change our priorities. The fight against terrorism is
already expensive, and costs will simply keep escalating. It is time to
turn our attention from our own people, who mean us no harm, to those who
so clearly do. At the bedrock is my conviction that the War on Drugs
should, at best, be considered frivolously reactionary if it weren't so
expensive in human and financial terms.

It is wrong.

Besides being wrong, right now, it is very dangerous to the real health of
our country.