From: [m--a--r] at [remail.obscura.com] (Mixmaster)
Newsgroups: alt.drugs.pot,alt.drugs,rec.drugs.cannabis,alt.drugs.pot.cultivation
Subject: Calls for Legalization: LA Times 9-13-96
Date: 14 Sep 1996 10:10:30 -0700

This article in yesterday's (9-13-96) Los Angeles Times says that the drug
war's critics, which include advisors to Dole economist Milton Friedman and
former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, make three main arguments:

1) Stiffer law enforcement, while it has increased the number of people in
prison for drug crimes from 57,000 in 1983 to 353,000 in 1993, has not
stemmed the flow of drugs; indeed, the price of cocaine has tumbled.

2) The cost to American society has been staggering: $75 billion a year, in
taxpayer money, plus destroying the inner cities by making them war zones.

3) Illegal drugs are not much worse than cigarettes and alcohol. For every
death caused by cocaine, heroin kills 20, alcohol kills 37, and
tobacco kills 132. Marijuana is by comparison nearly harmless. Every
substance has abusers; for cocaine, it's about 10% and maybe as high as 20%,
which is similar to alcohol,

Let the L.A. Times know what you think: mailto:[l--t--s] at [news.latimes.com]

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                 Los Angeles Times, 9-13-96, page A5

     Calls for Legalization Remain as Dole's Anti-Drug Rhetoric Rises

Policy: The candidate raises a banner first held by Nixon. But a chorus of
critics, including some on the right, argue that the war is unwinnable.

                           By DAVID G. SAVAGE
                        L.A. TIMES STAFF WRITER

   NEW YORK - Even as Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole is calling
for another escalation in America's 24-year "war on drugs," a new breed of
critics, including prominent conservatives, says it is time to call off the
conflict as unwise and unwinnable.
  "More people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die
from what we call, generically, overdosing," publisher William F. Buckley
Jr. said in introducing a February issue of the National Review.
  The "war on drugs," the magazine declared, "is lost."
  A panel of academics, economists and police chiefs assembled by Buckley
said the criminal laws against drug use cost the nation more than
$30 billion a year to enforce, put more than 350,000 Americans behind bars
and set off gangland violence in many cities unlike any since alcohol was
illegal in the 1920s.
  Economist Milton Friedman and former Secretary of State George P. Shultz,
advisors to Dole, have long maintained that drugs should be legalized.
  More recently, several left-leaning groups such as the Drug Policy
Foundation and the Lindesmith Center have gained solid funding from
billionaire investor George Soros to challenge the official wisdom of
Washington's drug warriors.
  Like Buckley, Soros says he is not pushing legalization of all drugs.
  "I don't have a prescription," he said. He is certain, however, that
today's get-tough policies are not working. The drug war, he said, is
proving to be "worse than the disease."
  The disease, acknowledges Joseph D. McNamara, former police chief of
Kansas City, Missouri, and San Jose, California, has serious effects: lives
wasted by addiction to illegal substances, particularly in inner cities.
  But legalizing drugs, he argues, would make matters no worse. When he was
a patrolman in Harlem in the early 1960s, he wrote in the Feb. 12 National
Review, "it did not take long before cops realized that arrests did not
lessen drug selling or drug use."
  However, drug reformers squirm when asked about the potential impact of
legalizing drugs such as LSD, heroin, cocaine and marijuana. They contend
that legalization would reduce the number of drug addicts, although they
admit it would also increase the number of casual users.
  "You would see more coca tea and less crack cocaine," says Rob Stewart of
the Drug Policy Foundation.
  Politicians of both parties have long sought to outdo each other in their
hard line on drugs. This year Dole, blaming President Clinton for a recent
rise in teenage drug use, has pledged that he would use the National Guard
and the U.S. military to stop the flow.
   The doves in the drug war say these promises have been heard many times
before, starting with President Nixon, who launched the current war in
1972. They complain that their own case has not been heard over the
official propaganda of the drug warriors.
  "If we can get the facts and the arguments out, we can win this fight,"
said Arnold S. Trebach, a 68-year-old American University professor who
heads the Drug Policy Foundation.
  The drug war's critics make three main arguments:
  1) Stiffer law enforcement, while it has put hundreds of thousands of
people in prison, has not stemmed the flow of drugs.
  In 1983, just before the Reagan administration stepped up the drug war,
57,000 people were behind bars for drug crimes. By 1993, the number topped
353,000.
  According to the FBI, about 1.3 million arrests are made each year for
drug offenses, far more than the 750,000 arrests involving violent crimes
such as murder, rape, robbery, and assault.
  Yet, despite record seizures of illegal drugs, cocaine is even more
available and sells for less than ever on American streets, experts say.
  Peter Reuter, a Rand Corp. expert, says the price of cocaine, $470 per
gram in 1982, has tumbled to $120 a gram.
  2) The cost to American society has been staggering.
  Beyond consuming $75 billion a year, in taxpayer money, "drug
prohibition" has sparked murder and mayhem by gangs trying to control the
drug trade, and a steady increase in robberies by addicts to pay for their
drug habits, the legalization advocates note.
  "This is what the nation has to show for the expenditure of billions of
dollars and nearly 15 years of death, blood and trench warfare," wrote
former Los Angeles County prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in a new book, "The
Phoenix Solution."
  Contrast this with alcohol, a potentially dangerous but legal drug.
Merchants who sell beer or liquor do not shoot each other on the streets,
and drunks rarely commit robberies or burglaries to buy booze.
  "If our purpose is to destroy the inner cities by making them war zones,
triumph is near," says Yale University law professor Steven Duke, author of
still another anti-drug-war book, entitled "America's Longest War."
   3) Most controversially, some drug war critics maintain that illegal
drugs such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin, while harmful, are not much
worse than cigarettes and alcohol.
  Duke and the Cato Institute's James Ostrowski compared death rates per
user for legal and illegal drugs.
  As Duke asserts in his book, "none of the illegal substances is remotely
as dangerous to its user as alcohol or tobacco. . . . For every death
caused by the intrinsic effects of cocaine, heroin kills 20,
alcohol kills 37 and tobacco kills 132."
  Marijuana, an illegal drug, is by comparison nearly harmless, he says.
  Ethan A. Nadelmann, a former Princeton University professor who heads the
research-oriented Lindesmith Center, says every substance has users and
abusers, whether it is alcohol, cocaine or even food. "For cocaine, about
10% and maybe as high as 20% of those who use it are going to go on to have
a problem, which is similar to the rate for alcohol," he says.
   Nixon declared "all-out global war on the drug menace" in 1972, creating
the Drug Enforcement Administration to coordinate the fight against these
illegal substances and to stop drug smuggling.
  In the mid-1980s, Congress imposed mandatory prison terms for persons
caught with illegal drugs and authorized the seizure of all property owned
by drug criminals.
  In June, the Supreme Court upheld a five-year prison term for a Flint,
Michigan, auto worker and the seizure of his farmhouse because he had grown
several dozen marijuana plants in a nearby field.
  On more than one occasion, federal officials have promised that a
stepped-up drug war would finally rid the nation of narcotics. The 1988
Anti-Drug-Abuse Act grandly proclaimed that the congressional policy was
"to create a drug-free America by 1995."
  Republicans in Congress have repeatedly faulted Clinton for not
vigorously prosecuting the drug war. He responded earlier this year not
only by increasing spending but also by appointing a true general, retired
Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, to lead the drug war.
  "This is a not a hopeless prospect," McCaffrey said recently of the
battle against illegal drugs. "Americans are too impatient," he added.
"They want a war that can be won in one or two years. We have to commit to
a 10- to 15- year effort."
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