US MN: OPED: U.S. Suppression Of Debate
Is Monkey On Nation's Back

[Cartoon accompanied column, with caption: "Americans who believe that our drug policy is doing more harm than good lack the power and resources of the drug prohibitionists.  But they make up for it in scholarship."]

On July 9, before he left on what his office called a "fact-finding" tour to the Netherlands, U.S.  drug czar Gen.  Barry McCaffrey declared the Dutch drug policy "an unmitigated disaster." The stunned Dutch ambassador responded: "I must say that I find the timing of your remarks [rather astonishing], six days before your planned visit ...  [to gain] firsthand knowledge about Dutch drugs policy and its results."

But McCaffrey didn't become a four-star general by backing up.  He called a press .conference to justify his conclusion.  "The murder rate in Holland is twice that in the U.S.," he announced.  The exasperated Dutch explained that their murder rate is actually half that of the United States.

The McCaffrey affair got little play here, perhaps because we don't expect the man who runs our drug program to know what he is talking about.  For the Dutch, facts are important because their drug policy is pragmatic.  They don't believe in implementing an anti-drug program that does more harm to society than drug use.

The U.S.  program, on the other hand, is a war against evil.  You don't do a cost-benefit analysis on a holy war.

The McCaffrey affair received little public attention, but it generated an awful lot of Web traffic from people who, in some detail, compared the Dutch situation with our own.

The U.S.  drug-fighting budget has soared from about $1 billion in 1980 to more than $17 billion this year.  We arrest 650,000 Americans a year for possession of marijuana, up 300 portent since 1980.  Largely because of drug arrests, we have the highest imprisonment rate of any industrialized country, seven times higher than that of the Netherlands.  Each year the police confiscate the property of hundreds of families simply on suspicion of drug use.  Motorists are randomly stopped on the roads for drug searches. Millions of people have their bodily waste analyzed for possible drug use. And still our young people use drugs at a higher rate than do the Dutch.

The ease for an apology from McCaffrey seemed powerful.  To get the other side of the story, I connected with the Web sites of our leading drug-fighting agencies.  I was looking for some solid justification for the official position.  Astonishingly, I found none.

The Drug Enforcement Administration's own Web site has nothing (www.usdoj.gov/dea).  The DARE site (www.dare-america.com) boldly announces to visitors that 'There's a lot to learn here." There's not.  The Partnership for a Drug-Free America (www.drugfreeamerica.org.), the conduit for the new $2 billion antidrug advertising program, is even more self-congratulatory: "Welcome to the most complete and accurate compilation of information about drugs on the Web." Tbe site does have a button that says "resources for parents." Click on it and weep.

Only Drug Watch (www.drugwatch.org) makes even a token attempt to buttress its position with facts.  At times, that attempt verges on the bizarre.  A key piece of evidence for them is a British study, which tells us that a 17-year-oId boy "was hospitalized with bleeding from his mouth and skin. Blood tests suggested anticoagulant therapy of some kind.  Despite the boy's denial, his family found a potent rodent killer, Brodifacoum, which is 100 times more toxic thnn Comadin, a prescription drug used for blood thinning. After medical and psychiatric treatment over the next six months, the patient admitted he learned to smoke marijuana laced with rodent poison from friends at a party."

Americans who believe that our drug policy is doing more harm than good lack the power and resources of the drug prohibitionists.  But they make up for it in scholarship.  Indeed, they seem to believe that simply by presenting facts, they will convince the policy-makers.

The motto of one Web site declares "Just Say Know." My favorite information fount is the remarkable Schaffer Library of Drug Policy (www.druglibrary.org/schaffer).  The nation owes a debt to Clffford Schaffer, who has painstakingly mounted the full text of scores of studies.  Here you can examine the 3,281 page, seven-volume report of the 1894 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, which concludes, "moderate use produces practically no ill effects." Or read in its entirety the 1930 Wickersham Commission Report on Alcohol Prohibition, or the 1944 Mayor LaGuardia Cornmission report on marijuana, or the 1982 report by the National Academy of Sciences, or the 1988 ruling by the DEA's own chief administrative law judge, who, after two years of hearing both sides, called the government's policy toward medical marijuana "unconscionable."

Want to know what is really going on in Europe? Click on Mr.  Schaffer's links and open a door to a spirited continental debate unencumbered by the debilitating moral overtones of America's nonconversation.  And then make your own decision.