WE'VE LOST THE DRUG WAR, NOW LET'S FIND A SEDATE APPROACH
Copyright (c) 1997, Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.

It is time to face two raw realities:

1. The war on drugs can never be won.

2. America's drug policy is a failure.

In his book, What It Means to Be a Libertarian, Charles
Murray says, "The United States has spent billions of
dollars on antidrug efforts, tied up a large proportion of
the nation's police and courts, and imprisoned hundreds of
thousands of people, thereby proving that no suppression
policy short of totalitarianism has much effect on the
price and availability of drugs."

Conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. says, "We
are speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75
billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70
billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50
percent of the 1.6 million Americans who are today in jail,
occupies an estimated 50 percent of the trial time of our
judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen yet a
plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect."

While I do not believe agents of the law should diminish
their vigorous enforcement efforts as long as laws prevent
the possession of marijuana, I do believe that the founding
fathers, intending no moral sanction, would have left to
the individual to determine what to do with mindaltering
drugs.

In fact, that is the conclusion of many thoughtful and
respected residents all along the political spectrum,
including, Dr. Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel
Prize in economics.

In 1972 when Richard Nixon launched his first war on
drugs, Friedman wrote, " Prohibition is an attempted cure
that makes matters worse for the addict and the rest of
us . . . Legalizing drugs might increase the number of
addicts, but it is not clear that it would . . . If drugs
were legally available, any possible profit from such
inhumane activity would disappear, since the addict could
buy from the cheapest source."

The 21st Amendment of the Constitution did more than
simply repeal the 18th Amendment, prohibition. It includes
a second section which says, "The transportation or
importation into any state, territory, or possession of the
United States, for delivery or use therein of intoxicating
liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby
prohibited . . ."

Some states continued prohibition. Others did not.

"If you got the federal government out of drug control,"
Friedman said, "it would have the same effect. There is
nothing that would prevent Arizona, if it wanted to, from
saying that the use or sale or transportation of these
drugs was prohibited. Now I doubt that that would happen,
in fact, but it might. It would be just as unsuccessful as
the attempts of the dry states to enforce prohibition."

Friedman has always opposed drug laws for ethical
reasons, noting, "Use should be allowed, except insofar as
I impose a cost on others. And if I do that, if I drive
while drunk, I ought to be put in jail. But if I go to the
back of my house and drink, that's my business." Perhaps
propelled by Arizona's recent permission to allow the
medical use of marijuana, or propelled by the New
England Journal of Medicine's observation that "A federal
policy that prohibits physicians from alleviating suffering
by prescribing marijuana for seriously ill patients is
misguided, heavyhanded and inhumane," others will come to
realize, our policies have failed.

I don't know if the direction should be to decriminalize
marijuana and concentrate on more insidious threats to
America's state of mind, but I do know where not to go, and
that is in the same direction.