From: GREGORY C.O'KELLY <[g--e--y] at [delphi.com]>
Organization: Delphi ([i--o] at [delphi.com] email, 800-695-4005 voice)






Commentary by Hugh Downs on ABC Radio's "Perspectives" 2/16/94

Towards the end of 1993, the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr.
Jocelyn Elders, addressed the National Press Club. Dr. Elders' speech
was about violence in the streets and the home. Violence is an obvious
health issue because violence injures and kills. After her remarks, the
Surgeon General was asked if she thought crime could be reduced if drugs
were made legal. The Surgeon General said: "I do feel that we would
markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalized, but I don't know
all the ramifications of this. I do feel that we need to do some
studies. In some of the counties that have legalized drugs, they
certainly have shown that there has been a reduction in their crime rate
and that there has been no increase in the drug use rate."   Dr. Elders'
suggestion caused a stir. The White House immedately distanced itself
from the Surgeon General's remarks, and claimed that no such studies
were even being considered. Unfortunately, despite the claims of some
journalists that her remarks triggered a debate, her remarks did not
trigger a debate. Her remarks, or more precisely the reactions to her
remarks, only underscored the fact that she had touched on a taboo
subject.

We treat a small number of certain drugs as special cases. Some drugs
are treated like sacred cows. When we hear phrases like "legalize drugs"
or "War on Drugs," we should remember that the word "drugs" in these
cases implies a relatively short list, primarily heroin, cocaine, and
marijuana. We should also remember that aside from those particular
drugs, virtually every other drug known to medical science is already
legal. Thousands of drugs that can kill or maim, or entice addictions,
are already legal. And they can all be obtained with prescriptions at
corner retail stores. These dangerous substances are used every day by
literally millions of people. We call these dangerous substances
"medicines." Now it's important to realize that there is no "War on
Medicines." The word "drugs" in the so-called "War on Drugs" refers only
to certain substances. And at least one of those substances, marijuana,
is not even considered dangerous.

If Dr. Elders is looking for studes, she might want to contact Dr.
Frederick H. Meyers, Professor of Pharmacology at UC San Francisco. Dr.
Meyers and his panel of drug experts has conducted a yearly assessment
of drug use for the state of California for more than 20 years. But in
1989, when the panel recommended that it was time to permit marijuana
cultivation for personal use, the Attorney General's office censored the
report. Evidently, it is taboo even to discuss the use of some drugs,
especially cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, but it's OK to discuss, and
use, other equally potent drugs. Drugs like Dilaudid, Placidyl, Demerol,
alcohol, tobacco are all licensed and controlled by the government. The
black market in these legal dangerous drugs is mini scule, the violence
surrounding them is insignificant, and they are connected to no drug
fortunes at all.

Culture and history may explain why we perceive these drugs differently
from others, but today, the big reason that some drugs are legal and
some drugs are illegal has a lot to do with money and power. Fighting
drug use consumes an enormous amount of money. The most recent war, the
one perpetrated by Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush, has now wasted a total of
more than100 billion dollars of dwindling tax money. Making some drugs
illegal also automatically creates drug dealers. And those drug dealers
have extorted at least as much money from our weakened economy.   The
illegal drug industry represents a gigantic, untapped and untaxed
underground economy. In some states, like California, Texas, and
Florida,  it may be larger than the legal economy. Of course, noboby
knows for sure because it's all illegal. We do know that taxpayers
already lost $100 billion on the drug war. The underground economy is
surely close to that. If we start adding up all those hundreds of
billions of dollars we get some astronomical numbers. Stopping the war
on drugs immediately would save not one fortune but quite literally
millions of fortunes. Stopping the war would also provide other
benefits. Our overcrowded prisons could be used once again to house
dangerous criminals instead of drug users. Tod Clear, a professor of
criminal justice at Rutgers, says 60% of the federal prison population
is drug related, compared to only 8% in 1975.

Another benefit would be to dismantle the corrupt machinery now used to
fight drug use. The illegal drug industry has become a symbiotic
combination of both cops and robbers. The tremendous fortunes created by
illegality have eaten away at legitimate law enforcement, and dragged
otherwise good individuals down to the level of common criminals. In
some cases, whole institutions have succumbed to crime. The temptation
to make big money from the drug trade is tremendous. The web of
corruption riddles law.

It's easy to imagine how an individual policeman, or an individual DEA
investigator, might be tempted by big drug money. Some drug dealers have
enough money to offer a cop the equivalent of several years' salary, in
some cases just to do nothing. They may only be asked to look the other
way, or just keep silent.

Some of the people who are now serving time behind bars for drug
violations once served as law enforcement officials. Conversely, some
people who now work for law enforcement agencies once served criminal
organizations. In fact a large part of the drug war depends on such
informants. The symbiotic dependence between criminals and authorities
should be brought to an end.

Drug seizure laws have become so irrational, that we now see law
enforcement institutions, not just single individuals, fall into
criminal activity. Not long ago, a law-abiding man in Southern
California, a man named Donald Scott, was attacked and shot to death by
law-enforcement agents who simply wanted his property. Newspapers around
the country reported the story; we did a segment on it on 20-20. Donald
Scott had no drugs at all, but under the zero tolerance laws, police
organizations were permitted to kill him and steal his private property,
all legally, on the mere stated suspicion that he had drugs on his
property. Recently the Supreme Court decided that zero tolerance had
been grossly abused. Now, accused people must have a hearing before
their property is taken.

We find another abuse of common sense in the tangle of foreign policy
and illegal drugs. American intellengence agencies, especially the CIA,
are known to work closely with drug dealers. Supposedly, the reasons
they do is to fight the drug war. But often, as we only recently
discovered in Haiti, the CIA will create an intelligence outfit that
turns to smuggling cocaine into the U.S.--for the money. The notorious
drug lords of Colombia actively supported the Reagan and Bush
Administrations' war against Nicaragua. When Congress refused to give
money to that illegal war, the Colombian cocaine lords gave millions of
dollars to the so-called contras. When money was not sent to them, the
contras smuggled drugs on their own. The contras, like Noriega in Panama
and the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, were criminals who were supported
with U.S. tax money. Significantly none of these groups smuggle scotch
or tobacco. Here in the U.S. thousands of local goons are organized into
gangs. The war on drugs has pumped billions of dollars into the profits
and holsters of these thugs. If the government seized their drugs--if
the government licensed, regulated, taxed, and patrolled the drug
markets--the way it already does will all other legal drugs--then the
profits flowing to local gangs would stop.

Unfortunately some politicians have built careers on the very
instability that violence and the drug war cause. Social instability
provides some politicians and some institutions with jobs. If the
government took control of drugs, a lot people would be out of jobs. The
anti-drug crusaders, or the tough-on-crime lobby thrives on the drug
war. Their dependence on crime and drugs is intimate and
inseperable--the the very definition of symbiosis. This observation has
led me finally to realize that many an anti-drug crusader has actually
come full circle and now stands four square as a pro-crime booster. The
question comes down to this: who will control these drugs? The
authorities, or the criminals? One answer is legal, the other is itself
criminal.

Dr. C. Everett Koop once told us that tobacco addiction is more
tenacious than heroin addiction. Tobacco drug dealers are legal, and
they're not involved in public shoot-outs with the authorities. Yet,
despite the tenacity of tobacco addiction, we have managed dramatically
to reduce tobacco consumption in this country, without making tobacco
illegal. Tobacco is a very harmful drug. Efforts to dissuade people from
using it, are to my mind, quite proper. But any  effort to keep it from
people by force would be counter productive. The worst thing we could do
would be to make it illegal. If cigarettes were outlawed, an apalling
wave of crime would engulf us, as a new class of drug barons would rise
to supply smokers with their cigarettes. And since they're be operating
outside the law, we would have a new war to deal with, a war on
cigarettes. Until the campaign of persuasion has reduced the number of
people who start smoking, it remains a major health problem worldwide.
Someone once estimated that more Colombians die every year from smoking
American tobacco than Americans die from Colombian cocaine.

And yet, it remains taboo even to discuss the legalization of certain
drugs and not others. Why is this? Some think it is because too many
people and institutions profit from the so-called drug war. It seems
like a slightly paranoid view, but it's hard to shake. Legalization
means getting rid of the criminals and the violence and putting the
government in charge. Legalization means taking the health problem of
drug addiction out of the hands of the attorney general and putting it
in the hands of the surgeon general, where it belongs. Apparently not
even the Surgeon General herself can bring up such a possibility right
now without being rebuked.

Audiotape available from She Who Remembers Productions, 818/287-8254