TOUGH JUDGE CONVICTS DRUG LAWS

If Nixon could get the United States to recognize Red China, maybe
Burley Mitchell can get North Carolina to recognize the problems with
drug Prohibition.

Mr. Mitchell isn't an aging hippy whose brain is befogged with
cannabis residues. He was a longtime justice of the N.C. Supreme
Court, and four years its chief. Before that, he was a judge on the
Court of Appeals, secretary of the N.C. Department of Crime Control,
an assistant N.C. attorney general, Wake County district attorney and
a Marine.

This is the man who says we're wasting money and lives by filling up
prisons with people who need treatment, not punishment, for their drug
addiction. He calls the "war on drugs" here and across the country "a
total failure."

Mr. Mitchell says it's time to think about decriminalizing drugs. That
would drain the huge profits from illicit dealing, reduce related
crimes, cut the cost of police and courts, and spare taxpayers the
huge expense of building even more prisons for petty crooks and those
they hook. It would free up money that could help people kick their
addictions.

Those are familiar arguments, but they rarely get very far in this
country. The potential dangers are obvious, and politicians are
deathly afraid of being called "soft on crime."

But Mr. Mitchell is no longer a politician. He can forget the advice a
wise older lawyer gave him early in his career: "Burley, you know, it
is permissible in life if you every once in awhile have a thought
cross your mind without expressing it."

Mr. Mitchell is not alone in the thought that the remedies we employ
against dangerous drugs may be worse than the disease. Politicians in
elective office aren't likely to join him in this heresy, but the rest
of us ought to think about what he's saying.

This is Burley Mitchell talking, for heaven's sake.