SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT END ITS WAR ON DRUGS?

Peter J. Christ's argument is an old one but one that still warrants a debate.

The former police officer and co-founder of Law Enforcement Against
Prohibition took his message to the Warminster Rotary Club last week.

He thinks our nation's War on Drugs should end because it's an
unwinnable waste of money and police resources.

If the possession and use of illegal drugs were decriminalized, he
argues, the drug business could be taken out of the control of
criminals and put under the control of the authorities.

Money that now goes to enforcing the drug laws could then be diverted
to drug addiction treatment and education.

Some people think that, if we gave robbers and murderers the drugs
they crave, they'd stop robbing and murdering the rest of us to get them.

That might sound logical, but I question the soundness of the logic.

More addicts might get into treatment programs, but might not the
easy availability of drugs create more addicts who otherwise might
not have become addicted?

Can society afford to support a class of drug-addled addicts who are
unable to work or lead productive lives because of their impairment?

We've been down that road before.

America didn't begin to prohibit drugs until the late 19th century,
and at first the only drug banned was opium.

The prevailing attitude was that the government had no right to
regulate what citizens put into their bodies, and numerous medicines
containing drugs like morphine, heroin and cocaine could be purchased
legally at any drug store or through the mail.

You could order a hypodermic syringe from the Sears catalogue, and
nobody knows for certain how many American men and women were addicts.

But drugs began to be regulated when the social problems their
widespread use created became visible - increases in domestic
violence, broken families, poverty and crime.

Proponents of drug legalization often point to the Netherlands.

Possession of controlled drugs, including marijuana, is illegal in
the Netherlands, but the Dutch have a different attitude.

Their drug policy is based on two principles: Drug use is a public
health issue rather than a criminal issue, and a distinction is made
between so-called hard drugs like heroin and cocaine and soft drugs
like marijuana and hashish.

The idea is that, if a problem has demonstrated that it's
unstoppable, it's better to control the problem than to continue
enforcing laws that have failed to stop it.

Dutch authorities, therefore, choose not to enforce all the laws.
They generally turn a blind eye to possession of small amounts of
marijuana and hashish for personal use, and they tolerate the coffee
shops at which patrons can purchase small quantities of the so-called
soft drug.

This, they say, removes the sale and distribution of marijuana and
hashish from the criminal underworld in which harder and more harmful
drugs are sold.

The policy apparently works well in the Netherlands. It has no more
drug addicts than other European countries, and some studies indicate
that even the rate of lifetime marijuana use is less than that of the
United States.

So could the Dutch model work here?

It's difficult to say.

The Netherlands is a much smaller nation, for one thing. That makes a
big difference.

And there are cultural differences. The Dutch are hardworking, polite
and orderly. They have a long tradition of tolerance.

Americans are probably more uptight and definitely more violent. The
homicide rate in America is about five times that of the Netherlands.

Just because a lenient drug policy works there, it doesn't mean it
would work here.

But it's something interesting to consider.