New Battle Lines for The Drug War
By William Raspberry, The Washington Post,
Monday, March 27, 2000; Page A27
Copyright 2000 The Washington Post

How goes the "war on drugs"?

In two words, not well. White House drug control policy
director Barry McCaffrey tries his best to put a happy face
on the "progress" of the campaign in his annual report. But
the best he can manage (according to the Associated Press,
which obtained an advance copy of the document) is a decline
in youth marijuana use and drug-related crime during the
past year.

On the other hand, cocaine and heroin remain widely
available, and their prices have dropped to record lows.
Methamphetamines pose a "serious potential nationally to
become the next 'crack' cocaine epidemic." An estimated
454 metric tons of cocaine reached the United States in
1998--up from 396 metric tons a year earlier. Ah, but coca
production is down in Bolivia and Peru.

Not particularly encouraging, and Ethan Nadelmann is not
particularly surprised. Nadelmann is director of the
Lindesmith Center, a drug-policy institute that is trying to
promote what the director calls a more sensible approach.

He says the government's bottom line--its criterion for
success or failure--is: How many people used illegal drugs
last year? If the number is down, that's progress; if it's
up, it's a setback.

What's wrong with that criterion? Plenty, says Nadelmann.
The approach spawns zero-tolerance efforts to eliminate drug
use, criminalizes behavior that is largely victimless,
spawns "wars" that damage international relations, fills
prisons with relatively harmless offenders--and costs a
bundle of money that might be better used.

And what approaches would he substitute?

It will come as a surprise to those who have heard the
passionate Nadelmann that he has no across-the-board answer.
Certainly not "legalization," he says, though his push for
decriminalizing certain categories of drug use is taken by
his critics as advocating decriminalization.

"Let me propose a different bottom line," he said in a
telephone interview last week. "Let the criterion be: Has
the death, disease, crime and suffering associated with both
drug use and drug prohibition gone up or down?"

And what difference would that make?

"Remember the line Bob Dole used in the Clinton-Dole debates
three years ago? Dole said in 1980, near the end of Jimmy
Carter's term, there were some 40 million users of illegal
drugs. Twelve years later (the Reagan and Bush era) less
than half that number used drugs. Since 1992 (the start of
the Clinton administration) drug use has started up again.

"Well, look at it with the criterion I propose. In 1980 40
million people used marijuana, and nobody used crack. Now
crack and drug-related HIV-AIDS are a public scourge. In
1980 there were 50,000 people behind bars for breaking drug
laws; today there are 400,000 people in jail for breaking
drug laws, thanks to mandatory minimum sentences. In 1980 we
were spending about $1 billion in federal money, and maybe
double that in the states, to combat drugs. Today the
federal antidrug outlays are $19.2 billion, and at least
that much more is being spent by the states. I'm not talking
about the physical and economic costs of crime. We will
spend close to $40 billion this year just on drug
enforcement."

But what would Nadelmann do?

For openers, he would drop the zero-tolerance approach and
acknowledge that there is always going to be some drug use.
The question is how to control the deleterious effects of
that use--for instance, how to stem the spread of HIV and
hepatitis.

Then he'd allow doctors to dispense methadone to combat
heroin addiction. "We know that methadone maintenance is the
most effective way of combating heroin addiction. We aren't
sure about cocaine or alcohol. So let's do first what we
know."

But come on: Isn't treating heroin addiction with methadone
like treating a bourbon alcoholic with scotch? "More like
treating a tobacco addiction with nicotine chewing gum or a
patch," says Nadelmann.

And high on Nadelmann's list: Scrap the mandatory sentencing
laws. "There's simply no public policy purpose being served
by mandatory minimums, and it has nothing to do with my
bottom-line question: How do you reduce the crime and
suffering associated with both drug use and drug
prohibition?"

Not a bad bottom line.