MEDICAL MARIJUANA INSANITY

US GE: Column: No Light At The End Of Drug-War Tunnel

The American drug war has been a failure, but that doesn't stop the U.S. government from pressing other countries to adopt its methods. Clinton called for greater cooperation among law enforcement agencies, expanded programs to eradicate fields of marijuana, coca and opium abroad, additional money for anti-drug propaganda and, of course, more arrests. "With determined and relentless effort, we can turn this evil tide," he insisted.

Don't bet on it. Despite huge increases in spending on both law enforcement and prevention, drug use in the United States has been rising in recent years, particularly among the teen-agers and young adults who have been bombarded since birth with the message that drugs are a demonic force.

Foreign governments, at our urging, are burning more drug crops, but the amount grown still overwhelmingly exceeds the amount destroyed. Every time soldiers descend on one area, production merely shifts to a different part of the country - or a different country entirely. If U.S. military and law enforcement agencies had slowed the flow of drugs into this country, the shortage would push up prices on the street - but prices have declined.

Meanwhile, non-violent offenders are being incarcerated on a vast scale. More than half a million people are arrested annually for merely possessing marijuana, a drug far safer than many legal ones. The number of drug offenders behind bars has skyrocketed by 700 percent since 1980.

The zealotry of the "zero tolerance" approach allows no compromise with rationality. The Department of Health and Human Services has long refused to acknowledge the scientific evidence that allowing addicts access to clean hypodermic syringes can slow the spread of the AIDS virus - and when it finally admitted the truth this year, it nonetheless refused to spend a nickel of federal AIDS prevention funds on this proven strategy. Marijuana has been shown to have a variety of legitimate medical uses, but the Clinton administration has done its best to prevent California and Arizona from allowing the therapeutic use of pot.

If the punitive approach were the answer, we would no longer have a problem. But the punitive approach, to a large extent, is the problem. Most of the crime associated with the trade stems not from the physiological effects of drugs but from the laws against them. This illegality keeps prices artificially inflated, forces addicts to turn to crime to pay for their habits and assures the advancement of hard-core criminals willing to employ violence as a business strategy.

We saw the same problems during Prohibition - and we solved them by accepting that we would never achieve an alcohol-free society. As a direct result of the repeal of the Volstead Act, crime plunged, and it stayed down for decades. But so intense is the paranoia about drugs that the option of tolerance is treated as unthinkable.

Why is that? We assume that only the threat of severe punishment can deter people from mass addiction. But forbidden fruit can be alluring simply because it is forbidden. Alcohol consumption actually rose during Prohibition.

In recent years, the drugs that have declined in popularity are the ones that are legal - alcohol and tobacco. Thanks to a growing awareness of the hazards of drinking and smoking, Americans have become more cautious and responsible in their conduct. In the Netherlands, where marijuana can be legally sold and consumed, teenagers are less likely to use pot than adolescents here. If marijuana were treated the same way here, the likely result would not be more drug use but a shift in use from cigarettes and booze to cannabis - a net plus for public health.

But the drug warriors refuse to consider any moderation of their policy. Like the generals and politicians who got us into Vietnam, they pretend that if we just redouble our efforts, we can achieve whatever we want. So Americans should expect to be at this task indefinitely, looking in vain for that light at the end of the tunnel.