Increasing numbers of law enforcement veterans and conservative pundits are questioning the philosophy of criminalizing the personal use of various drugs. So why do other conservatives worship personal responsibility, yet insist on the criminalization of private choice?

In a free society, why should the state intrude on a choice of substance we may deign to use? We know this approach doesn't work and its police state overtones are unworthy of our notions of basic human freedoms.

Educate by all means -- as has worked in the case of tobacco -- but to waste scarce crime-fighting resources on such unreachable objectives is clearly preposterous. When $500 worth of heroin or cocaine at the source is transformed into $100,000 on the streets of North America, "all the cops, prisons and executions in the world cannot impede a market with that kind of tax-free profit margin," writes former Kansas City, Mo. police chief Joseph McNamara. "It's the illegality that permits the obscene markup, enriching drug traffickers."

Drugs are here to stay; there's no longer any point in pretending otherwise. Learning to better manage their use, as has been done with alcohol, makes more sense than fantasy attempts to prohibit them.

Some of those fantasies have led to oppressive agony for Americans, half of whose prison population now consists of drug offenders.

Some Americans caught growing larger amounts of marijuana are now imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives, while violent criminals of the worst order can easily see a light at the end of their barred tunnel. Last month in this newspaper, one of the Calgary Police Service's most wanted was a man sought for possession of marijuana and production of a controlled substance. Not enough violent criminals to go around, I guess.

More people are killed each year as a result of the war on drugs -- mainly from the violence inspired by prohibition-inflated dope prices -- than from overdose. For Vancouver deputy police chief Ken Higgins, the bankruptcy of laws criminalizing heroin possession in light of that city's AIDS epidemic are obvious. The need to tackle the opiate curse medically are just as clear.

"If we wiped the chalkboard clean and said how would we deal with the situation now, the last thing we'd come up with is the present system," Higgins says. Prohibitionists claim decriminalization would create a nation of addicts, with no basis in historical fact. And after any repeal, drug potency and purity would be regulated -- reducing the risk of overdose.