Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401110255
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: THEODORE J. EDLICH
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It doesn't take a great degree of imagination to understand the context of her remarks.
She is a physician. Gunshot wounds and acts of violence represent the majority of trauma cases besieging inner-city hospitals. Nearly all are drug-related.
She is a professor of pediatrics. Drugs, violence and fear increasingly scar the lives of the 40 percent of American children who live in poverty.
While the suggestion that there be a debate seems radical, it is based on the social pathology of our times; violence is epidemic in our nation, and the drug economy is a major virus behind that disease. Conservative spokesman William Buckley and Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore have gone much farther, openly advocating the legalization of drugs.
The arguments against legalizing drugs are compelling:
Legalization would increase drugs' social acceptability and encourage the addiction of people who would never have broken the law to use them.
Just which drugs would you legalize and why? Marijuana, heroin, cocaine, LSD, qualudes, amphetamines, PCB? Just the idea of a drug equivalent to the ABC store is enough to shake even the most stalwart supporter. Some drugs like "crack" are reported to be addicting even after the first use. Legalization of some drugs would not eliminate a black market, which would always create a new trade around whatever substance was still illegal.
It would be more prudent to keep the laws, but invest more resources in treatment and stemming the desire for drugs. Currently, the vast majority of money goes to law enforcement.
Legalization efforts in countries such as the Netherlands have been abysmal failures, resulting only in attracting addicts from all over Europe to clog the public places of Amsterdam.
Drugs are a symptom of social decay. To make them more available will only contribute to the breakdown of family and communal values. Alcohol is bad enough!
Yet it is also hard to dismiss out of hand the arguments for decriminalization and/or legalization of drugs:
There is a direct connection between drugs and crime. At least 40 percent of all convictions and imprisonments are directly related to the drug trade. Another 40 percent are indirectly related to drugs.
Despite billions spent on interdiction and law enforcement, the flow of drugs has not been significantly curtailed. There is so much money to be made that there is no end to those willing to take risks. It can even corrupt those in law enforcement.
The current approach is not cost-effective. While the drug trade thrives, billions more are being spent to build new prisons to house criminals - not the drug bosses, but the street dealers and users. In Virginia, prisons have tripled and it is projected that another 20 will be needed by the year 2000. The cost of the criminal-justice and corrections system in Virginia rises at a faster rate than expenditures on education. It costs the state more to keep someone in prison for four years than to send them through Virginia Tech or the University of Virginia. Few believe that such investments will make streets safer this year.
There is a direct correlation between the illegal drug trade and the increase of weaponry and escalation of violence in our society. Growing gang warfare in America is nourished by the drug economy. To protect their livelihood, gangs like nations seek to outarm their opponents, the police. Law enforcement and citizens, fearful for their lives, join the arms race.
The drug economy takes its greatest toll on poor communities and neighborhoods. Although drug usage is common to all social classes, it is the poor and ethnic minorities who are targeted by the drug cartels. It is here that children are hired as carriers, gangs create their turfs, and residents live in conditions reminiscent of modern-day Beirut.
The drug economy and trade undercut attempts at community renewal and empowerment. It creates outlaw heroes, with fancy cars and gold chains, to be emulated. It produces jobs with which the public and private sector cannot compete. Drug outlaws create outlaw communities at war with the greater society.
Drug trafficking exacerbates already strained racial relations. White drug czars target poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods for street sales. High visibility and naked violence draw the attention of law enforcement. By and large, those who are arrested and go to prison are black. Sixty-five percent of those in Virginia prisons are African-Americans. Many blacks resent the fact that the white drug financiers, plane owners and bosses rarely get caught. Violence in black neighborhoods and seeming protection of outlaws drive existing racial prejudice even deeper in the white community. This prejudice creates an even greater divide between affluent suburbs and urban centers with increasing poverty.
There is a very strong parallel between the current situation and the prohibition of alcohol, also a drug, earlier in our history. Prohibition occasioned and encouraged the growth of black-market sales, organized crime, violence, murder and mayhem. Increases in law enforcement, though popular, only escalated the violence. In the repeal of prohibition,With repeal, the nation decided to spend money on treatment and prevention rather than on stemming the flow. Today in Virginia, Alcohol Beverage Control proceeds help support education of the young in Virginia.
Other countries are experimenting with legalization and decriminalization alternatives. Nearly a year ago, Ed Bradley of "Sixty Minutes" reported on an experiment in England under which addicts could get prescriptions for maintenance doses through local doctors and have them filled at the pharmacy. Not only was crime drastically reduced in the communities affected, but there was evidence that many of those addicted were voluntarily reducing their doses and even ending their usage.
There may be even more questions than there are positions. What actually have been the results of decriminalization and legalization efforts in other countries? What possible mechanisms for distribution would be publicly acceptable? What alternatives are there that have not heen explored? In a world of shrinking public dollars, where is the money best spent? Do not matters such as universal health-care and welfare reform deserve priority in the national agenda?
Yet the truth remains that we have an epidemic on our hands that is eviscerating our society. All Joycelyn Elders suggested was a public debate. Let it begin.
\ Theodore J. Edlich of Roanoke is president of Total Action Against Poverty.
by CNB