Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 28, 1993 TAG: 9309070182
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The drug menace offers an easy target for politicians seeking votes from a fearful electorate. Promises to get tough on dealers, to throw them in the slammer forever - or longer, if some way can be found - have been vote-getters, joining the flag, mom and apple pie for gutsiness on the political circuit. And drugs are, in fact, a massive menace, corroding the national spirit.
The question is: What has this past decade of warfare actually yielded?
An essay in the Urban Agenda, a newsletter put out by the conservative/libertarian Urban Policy Research Institute, offers some disturbing food for thought:
After a decade of pouring money into law enforcement efforts to stem illegal drug sales, the government has made illegal drugs more expensive. But this, argues the institute's analysts, has tended to increase property crimes. The essay cites a 1989 survey according to which 32 percent of inmates imprisoned for robbery, 31 percent for burglary, 27 percent for larceny and 23 percent for fraud said they had committed their offenses to get money for drugs.
The illicit drug trade has contributed to the growing violence in American society. The institute reports that the number of homicides classified as ``drug-related'' nearly doubled from 1986 to 1989.
And drug arrests seem to have made not a dent in the trafficking. On the contrary, the institute cites a study of drug offenders in Florida that concluded ``the probability of recidivism does not vary with the amount of sentence served.''
All of which raises serious questions about what the nation is accomplishing, and at what cost.
Calls for legalizing drugs are met with equally serious concerns that such a change would confer acceptability on the use of drugs that can be addictive; that can kill outright or slowly, by destroying the user's health; that can impair judgment to the point of making a user dangerous to himself and others; and, in the case of hallucinogens, that can make an otherwise nonviolent person violent.
The fear is that legalization would imply that the use of these drugs is OK - ``It's not illegal, is it?'' - and deliver even more people into their hold.
Yet illegal drug trafficking is creating havoc in American cities, and the response so far has not been noticeably effective. There are hard questions to ponder, questions that can't be answered by empty promises to build more prisons and lengthen prison terms.
At the least, the nation needs to shift more anti-drug resources from attempts to restrict supply to efforts aimed at reducing demand: education, prevention and treatment. We also need to begin debating in earnest whether drugs should be viewed more as a health than as a law-enforcement problem.
by CNB