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by Dirk Chase Eldredge , Bill McCollum Yes: Take huge profits away from criminals and invest the money in harm reduction. America's war on drugs is reminiscent of the Russian princess who wept profusely at the death of the hero in the opera, while, at the curb, her waiting carriage driver froze to death in a cruel Moscow ice storm. Policy makers are deeply preoccupied with waging the war on drugs. While they do, the destructive, albeit unintended, consequences continue to pile up like the icy snows of Moscow. The world would be a much better place if illicit drugs didn't exist, but they do, so we must deal with them. Our challenge is to do so in a way that will advance our national interest. Our failed war on drugs is doing just the opposite; America must respond to that reality with a basic change in approach. Legalization is the only practical way to bring about positive results. The money legalization would generate to fight drug abuse would make harm reduction -- rather than the twice-failed policy of prohibition -- the fulcrum of our drug policy. The failure of prohibition as public policy stems from its transformation of some citizens' cocktail-hour-like drug use and others' medical and psychological problems into crimes. It is no less devastating than if we made both possession and consumption of alcoholic beverages illegal. Social drinkers and alcoholics alike would suddenly be criminalized. As it always does, prohibition has spawned a robust black market that inevitably has spun off other social pathologies such as violence and corruption. Furthermore, it is a policy that can only fail because its objective -- a drug-free America -- is unrealistic and unattainable. Supporters of the drug war allege that we are winning, citing as proof a decline in drag use from the peak years of the 1970s, but that drop came to an abrupt end in 1992. The number of regular users has increased each year since then among several age groups. Many argue against the decriminalization of drugs on the grounds that more people would abuse drugs than under prohibition. This politically popular theory is unsubstantiated and misleading. Within any group there are a certain number prone to abuse of mind-altering substances. This propensity for abuse has everything to do with the individual's personal value system and psychological stability and absolutely nothing to do with the legal status of drugs. Legalizing currently illegal drugs will neither increase nor decrease the number of people inclined toward, or indulging in, addictive behavior. Those inclined to addictive behavior have that inclination independent of the law of the land and have ample opportunity to obtain drugs under existing laws and customs. They have two major mind-altering alternatives available that are legal: prescription drugs and alcohol. A third alternative is illegal drugs. What effect will legalization have on the abuse of drugs? To answer that question intelligently we must understand that drug use is not necessarily drug abuse. The try-and-die concept promoted by the drug warriors simply does not square with the facts. The vast majority of drug users fall into the recreational category. For instance, less than 1 percent of those who try cocaine become daily users, and 74 percent of regular cocaine users use it less than once a month. Looked at in the context of these facts instead of the hysteria promoted by the defenders of the status quo, it is not surprising that three different studies have shown only 2 to 4 percent of respondents would try now-illegal drugs if they were legalized. Given the small percentage of drug users who lapse into abuse, this hardly suggests that legalization will trigger a mass movement into drug abuse. Legalization re-asserts the truth that we are all responsible for our own behavior. The drug war, while barren of results, is rich in ironies. For example, increased law-enforcement pressure on smuggling encourages more concentrated drugs, leading to less bulk and reduced chance of discovery. Some recent samples of heroin are 90 percent pure, compared with 7 to 15 percent purity a few years ago. This greater potency has added to heroin's popularity, exactly the opposite of what law enforcement intends, because heroin is by far the most dangerous street drug. Our national amnesia over alcohol prohibition destines us to repeat an unintended consequence from that era. During Prohibition, the consumption of lower-potency alcoholic beverages, such as beer, plummeted while the market share of moonshine and other strong distilled spirits soared. Soon after repeal, the consumption patterns of both high- and low-potency beverages returned to pre-Prohibition levels. From this experience, we can extrapolate that today's shift to more-potent drugs is directly related to drug prohibition. Prohibition dictates that illicit drugs only can be obtained via the black market. Prices are whatever the market will bear, resulting in high prices and obscene profits. Because drugs are so expensive, many users recruit friends to become users so they can sell drugs to them and help defray their own costs. In fact, 70 percent of those who deal drugs also are users. This results in the drug market's version of a Mary Kay network. Think for a moment about the size and motivation of the resulting drug-sales force which would immediately be immobilized by legalization. One of the most damaging aspects of the drug black market is the allure of the easy money it makes available to our inner-city youth. A 16-year-old from Washington, virtually unemployable after having been arrested 12 times, manages to clear the heady sum of $300 to $400 a day selling crack. "I don't want to make this a life thing," he alleges. "I'll quit when I get out of high school." He then makes a telling and contradictory admission: "But when you start you really can't stop. The money is too good." With drugs, corruption is the cancer and money the carcinogen. The corruption of public officials -- police, judges, border and prison guards, customs inspectors and others in positions of public trust -- is a destructive consequence of our prohibitionist drug policies. Bribery corrupts far and wide. A law-enforcement officer can provide protection against arrest. A drug-cash-laden defendant can purchase perjured testimony or bribe a judge. The wide availability of drugs inside even our most secure prisons is powerful testimony to the corruption drug money can buy. And America is exporting this corruption. Ask the police officials of Mexico, Colombia and other source countries. American narco dollars pay for drug-related murders, kid nappings and bribery in those countries. Instead of owning up to the fact that our demand is the real cause of the problem, we try to export the blame as well. We indulge in the arrogant charade of certification, judging whether other nations are doing their part in fighting the drug problem, when we should be focusing on solving the problem, whose root cause lies directly at our feet. Without our demand there would be no supply. Misdirected public policy, always clad in the armor of good intentions, carries with it the very real threat of repression wrought by the frustration-repression cycle of its own failure. As various drag-war tactics such as asset seizure and mandatory minimum sentences fail, policy makers can justify ever more desperate measures. The tight spiral of initiation, failure and more-desperate measures inevitably results in a creeping loss of civil liberties. In response to the rising pitch of drug-war hysteria during the 1980s and 1990s, 28 states passed laws to tax the possession of illegal drugs, an idea that does violence both to the principle of fair taxation and respect for the rule of law. We have government declaring it illegal to possess marijuana and cocaine while simultaneously demanding payment of a tax for possession, a clear violation of the constitutional protection against self-incrimination. Despite court decisions overturning the laws, many states, most notably North Carolina, have tweaked their statutes to skirt the law and go right ahead collecting the tax. Not coincidentally, police and sheriff's departments get 75 percent of the take. This leads to the mixing of law enforcement with the profit motive, a recipe rife with opportunities for abuse. But never mind the danger to our civil liberties. This is war. Because drug dealing and use are victimless crimes, the police must either personally observe the crime or participate in it in undercover mode to make a valid arrest. This makes drug-law enforcement doubly labor intensive. Those in law enforcement routinely estimate that more than half of today's crimes are drug-related, leading to the imprisonment of over 1 million citizens per year for drug-related crimes. This, in turn, has resulted in 40 states being placed under court order to end prison overcrowding. A major cost of the drug war is the corrosive effect it is having on the confidence of black Americans in their government. A 1990 opinion poll of African-Americans in New York City showed 60 percent gave partial or full credence to the ludicrous charge that government deliberately makes sure drugs are easily available in poor, black neighborhoods in order to harm black people. As demonstrated by the social pathologies enumerated above which derive directly from prohibition, like the Russian princess, America is so preoccupied with the show of prohibition it is oblivious to what is going on in the real world. By legalizing drugs and selling them for about half the present prices through state-operated retail outlets similar to those in the 13 states that presently have state-controlled alcohol sales, we could produce profits of conservatively $21 billion per year to fund harm reduction. This money would be required, by law, to be used to buy the drugs for resale, run the outlets and fund treatment on demand ($12 billion), an anti-drug education program equal in cost to the combined advertising budgets of the big-three auto makers ($3.25 billion) and an AIDS-sized research budget ($1.3 billion) to find pharmacological solutions to drug addiction and dependence. This would advance the national interest by making real progress against the drug problem, not through fear, coercion, and incarceration, but through education, treatment and research. Eldredge served as co-chairman of Ronald Reagan's first California gubernatorial campaign and is author of Ending the War on Drugs -- A Solution for America. No: Don't wave the white flag yet, a true war on drugs has yet to be launched. No discussion on the merits of drug legalization is legitimate unless it is prefaced by these alarming, undisputed facts: * Teen drug use has doubled since 1992; * Nearly half of all 17-year-olds say they could buy marijuana within an hour; * The number of heroin-related emergency-room admissions jumped 58 percent between 1992 and 1995; * and, most shockingly, illegal drugs and drug-related crime and violence kill 20,000 Americans a year, at a cost of $67 billion. If thousands of young Americans were killed in Bosnia or in any other place across the globe, there would be riots in the streets. And yet, even with these troubling statistics as a backdrop, a small, vocal minority are advocating drug legalization as the cure for our nation's drug crisis. I can't think of a more grim proposal for our children and our nation. Many legalization advocates argue that if drugs were legalized, crime and violence would decrease. The commonsense response to that argument is that the already unacceptably high level of teen drug use undoubtedly would soar even higher, dragging in its wake the societal problems that accompany drug use. The reality is that drug use is almost always a contributing factor to criminal behavior. According to a survey of state prison inmates, 28 percent of prisoners convicted of murder, 20 percent of inmates convicted of sexual assault and 23 percent of inmates convicted of assault were under the influence of drugs when they committed their crimes. Another study indicated that drug users were 10 times more likely to commit a violent act than non-drug users. Drug use and crime go hand in hand -- it is that simple. In fact, history has demonstrated the reverse effect drag legalization would have on crime rates. When California attempted to decriminalize marijuana in 1976, arrests for driving under the influence of drugs rose 46 percent among adults and 71.4 percent among juveniles within the first six months. Another myth often associated with the legalization movement is that revenue and taxes from the sale of drugs would help boost the economy. This claim is flawed at best and unsubstantiated by facts. The economic benefit, if any, would be eclipsed by the billions spent treating the societal ills caused by drug abuse. The Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, estimates drug legalization would cost society between $140 billion and $210 billion a year in lost productivity and job-related accidents. For instance, total tax revenue from the sale of alcohol is $13.1 billion a year, but alcohol extracts more than $100 billion a year in social costs such as health care and lost productivity. There is no evidence that taxing narcotics such as cocaine, heroin and marijuana would bolster revenues any more than alcohol does. And the expected revenue certainly would not offset the social and medical costs. With 90 percent of the public against drug legalization, proponents have masked their tactics with phrases such as "drug reform," "medicalization" and "harm reduction." In an effort to chip away at our nation's drug laws, groups are promoting the adoption of loosely worded state ballot initiatives that would legalize marijuana for "medicinal use." With clear evidence of marijuana's gateway effect -- 12 to 17-year-olds who use marijuana are 85 times more likely to use cocaine than those who abstain -- these efforts are quite troubling. The cavalier labeling of a dangerous and highly addictive drug as "medicine" sends the wrong message to our youth. An initiative that was proposed for this fall's ballot in Washington, D.C. -- where 96 percent of all youth arrested for crime test positive for marijuana -- would permit individuals to legally use marijuana for medical treatment when recommended by a licensed physician. No written prescription would be required. Like its highly publicized predecessors in California and Arizona, this initiative would have made growing, trafficking and possessing marijuana legal for almost any ailment. Unlike all other drugs used to treat illness or pain, no Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, approval would be necessary. When almost anyone could find a physician to recommend smoking marijuana for any ailment, policing illegal use and trafficking would become a practical impossibility. While I do not possess the medical or scientific expertise to pass judgment on whether marijuana is a medicine, the FDA does. So do the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society and the National Multiple Sclerosis Association. Yet, each and every one of these esteemed organizations has concluded marijuana has no medicinal value. The collective expert judgment of these organizations and the long-established FDA drug approval process cannot be ignored simply because some people want to label marijuana "medicine." Science cannot be based on opinion polls. For three decades, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning it has a high potential for abuse, lacks any currently accepted medical use and is unsafe, even under medical supervision. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, HIV-positive smokers of marijuana progress to full-blown AIDS twice as fast as nonsmokers and have an increased incidence of bacterial pneumonia. There is no doubt that these campaigns are more about drug legalization than about providing relief for the sick and dying. In 1993, Richard Cowen, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, declared" ... medical marijuana is our strongest suit. It is our point of leverage which will move us toward the legalization of marijuana for personal use, and in that process we will begin to break down the power of the narcocracy to wage a war of terror over things." I can think of no political strategy more unseemly than drag legalization masquerading as compassion. Voters and, more importantly, the seriously ill, deserve the facts, not emotional half-truths. Legalization advocates point out that despite ongoing efforts, drug use is up. So why not wave the white flag in the drug war? While it's true that drugs are cheaper and more plentiful than ever before on the streets of America, now is not the time to abandon our efforts. The truth is, America has not been waging a true war on drugs. The lack of a balanced antinarcotics strategy has played a key role in the rise in drag use. Not a single U.S. military airplane or warship is assigned to interdiction efforts in the Eastern Pacific between Colombia, Mexico and the United States. The number of flight and steaming hours spent patrolling the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico has been cut by two-thirds since 1992. With the exception of the U.S.-Mexico border effort, resources to intercept drags entering the country from source countries and the transit zone have also been cut by two-thirds since 1992. Despite clear evidence that a balanced approach to the drag war achieved real success (from 1988 to 1991, cocaine use dropped by 35 percent and marijuana use dropped by 16 percent), in mid-1993 the Clinton administration made a very public, "controlled shift" in its drag strategy. This shift resulted in increased finding for prevention and treatment efforts at the expense of interdiction efforts. Since 1993, funds dedicated to international interdiction efforts have continued to languish around 13 percent of total federal expenditures on the drag war, as opposed to the 33 percent allotted in 1987. The result? Quantity is up, price is down and more kids are becoming users. Let's not kid ourselves. Drug trafficking is a business. The less it costs to grow and transport illegal drugs into this country, the lower the price of drugs on the street. Therefore, reducing the flow of drags entering the United States must be a top priority. Until the availability of drugs is dramatically reduced and the price driven up, education and law-enforcement efforts cannot be expected to succeed in any meaningful way. All the cocaine entering the United States originates in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. Most of the heroin in the country is grown and produced in Colombia. When I visited these countries earlier this year, key U.S. antinarcotics personnel told me that the supply of drags leaving those countries could be reduced by 80 percent in only a couple of years if our government would commit the necessary resources and adjust its policies in cooperation with the source-country governments. Peru, which already has adopted more aggressive tactics, is producing results. In the two years since Peruvian President Alberto Fujimort implemented a get-tough, antitrafficking and crop-eradication program -- including shooting down drug smugglers' aircraft -- cocaine production in Peru has dropped 40 percent. With more U.S. support, victory over the narcotics trade in Peru is within reach. The same could be accomplished in Bolivia and Colombia with the cooperation of their governments and a continued U.S. effort to keep radar and tracking planes in the air 24 hours a day. A continued investment in demand-reduction strategies is critical. I strongly support finding ways to persuade Americans that doing drugs is wrong -- that it destroys lives, families, schools and communities. But we need a comprehensive counter-drug strategy that addresses all components of this problem. The lesson of the past decade is simple: Prevent drags from entering the country and you drive up the price of drugs. Drive up the price of drugs and you save lives. Unfortunately, a lot has changed in recent years. Instead of a comprehensive drag-education effort in our schools, homes and workplaces, we see attitudes of indifference and ambivalence. The legalization movement is but one reason why the message that drug use is both destructive and wrong has been lost. Sadly, today's youth increasingly see no harm in using drags. This dramatic reversal in trends spells grave harm for both the present and the future. We owe it to our kids to wage a true war on drugs. McCollum, a Florida Republican, is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime and vice chairman of the Banking and Financial Services Committee.
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