Newshawk: carey.ker@utoronto.ca

Source: Ottawa Citizen, Editorial

Contact: letters@thecitizen.southam.ca

Website: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/

Pubdate: Monday 08 June 1998

WAR ON REASON

Today in New York City, an act of almost indescribable stupidity will be committed. Eighteen years after Ronald Reagan announced he would stamp out drugs, the "War on Drugs" will be declared once again.

This time the United Nations will play the fool, with an announcement of the most ambitious international anti-drug program ever. Representatives from 130 nations, plus 30 heads of state, including US president Bill Clinton, will be there to applaud.

The cornerstone of the UN plan will be a program to get farmers in the nine major drug-producing nations -- Afghanistan, Burma, Laos, Colombia, India, Mexico, Pakistan, and Vietnam -- to switch from growing plants that produce illegal drugs to other crops. The stated goal of the UN plan: To eradicate the world's entire production of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana in 10 years.

Bonne chance, nos amis. The nations being targeted range from merely corrupt to tyrannical to anarchic. Authority, where it exists, is often intimately involved in the production and transportation of drugs. Unless the UN is prepared to pay every farmer to grow soybeans and send peacekeepers to fight off the guerrillas, police, and soldiers who will be displeased that their cash-cow has dried up, its war will be lost.

But assume the UN could manage the impossible and turn the nations now producing the bulk of the world's drugs into exporters of soybeans. Would that mean victory in the War on Drugs?

Not at all. Cutting the supply of drugs does nothing to reduce the demand for them. It would mean, however, that some of that demand wouldn't be met, which would push the value of drugs skyward. That in turn would tempt criminals, soldiers, police, guerrillas, and farmers in nations elsewhere in the world to produce their own supply. If it's not Afghanistan and Burma supplying the drug markets, it will be Nigeria, or Peru, or somewhere else. Unless the UN can afford to put every farmer in the world on the anti-drug dole, crop substitution won't work.

Nor will it work even if it is coupled with new programs to lessen the demand for drugs. Every Western nation, particularly the U.S., has tried to stifle demand using every imaginable carrot and stick, and met with no more success than King Canute when he ordered the tides to halt. Demand for drugs rises and falls largely according to social factors which are impervious to the efforts of governments.

For all its futility, the UN's quixotic quest will not come cheaply. By one estimate, the new plan will require $3 to $4 billion US. To put that in perspective: 2.2 million children under the age of five die in developing countries each year from diarrhoeal dehydration because they don't have safe drinking water. How much clean water $3 to $4 billion US could buy can only be imagined.

There will be other facets to the UN's anti-drug drive, most of which will be decided over the course of three days of deliberations in the UN General Assembly. The UN will not, however, discuss alternatives to the War on Drugs. Mexico, a nation that bears the worst scars of the drug war, first proposed this conference as a way of assessing what has been done, and learning from that experience, but other nations, particularly the U.S., used the planning stages of the conference to push discussion of alternatives off the agenda. Non-governmental organizations that asked to hold a short, small seminar to discuss alternatives to the War on Drugs were refused permission.

What about Canada? As always, the federal government is clambering onto the bandwagon and cheering on the war. Since the Trudeau years, it has seldom given serious thought to drug policy, preferring instead to follow whatever variation on failure is being proposed.

That, sadly, is true of most of the world's nations. Sense and experience are ignored, folly is repeated, and the War on Drugs becomes a war on reason itself.

United Nations To Hold Drug Summit

c The Associated Press

By ROBERT H. REID

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - With demand for illegal drugs rising, leaders of the world's major drug-producing and drug-consuming nations open a three-day conference Monday to discuss how to fight the scourge.

President Clinton, who delivers the opening address, has pledged to cut drug use by half in the United States - the world's leading drug consumer - by the year 2007.

Latin American leaders say their efforts to curtail drug production and trafficking will fail unless Americans curb their appetite for drugs. The presidents of Mexico, Venezuela, Peru and Colombia are expected to deliver that message at the conference.

The goal of the U.N. General Assembly's ``special session on drugs'' is to endorse target dates for governments to enact legislation on issues such as money laundering, judicial cooperation, reducing demand for drugs and stamping out cultivation of illicit crops.

``Around the world, there is a growing consensus that more needs to be done to understand and reduce the rising demand for drugs,'' the United Nations said in a report.

But critics fear the United Nations is placing too much emphasis on legal measures, following a path that has largely failed in the United States, and should consider drugs a health problem.

The conference is expected to approve a plan prepared in March in Vienna, Austria, setting a target date of 2003 for countries to pass laws to control money laundering and increase judicial cooperation.

It also sets 2008 as the target for significantly reducing illegal cultivation of coca, cannabis and opium poppies and for controlling the spread of amphetamines.

Some critics, however, believe the United Nations should use the resources of the World Health Organization to develop effective treatment programs instead.

``Drug policy is a global public health concern,'' said Dr. Alex Wodak, director of alcohol and drug services at St. Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Australia. ``The U.N.'s exaggerated emphasis on interdiction and criminalization makes it impossible to protect public health.''

In an open letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, about 500 prominent figures from around the world said the ``global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself.''

``Human rights are violated, environmental assaults perpetrated and prisons inundated with hundreds of thousands of drug violators,'' the letter said. It called for a drug program based on ``common sense, science, public health and human rights.''

Among the signers were former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, and former President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica.

Pino Arlacchi, head of the U.N. drug control office in Vienna, insists that the United Nations has no intention of promoting a U.S.-style ``war on drugs'' on a global scale.

``For the first time, we have the issue of demand reduction included at the same level as other components of narcotics control,'' Arlacchi said.

But the U.N. drug office has frowned on novel experiments, such as Swiss program to prescribe limited amounts of heroin to addicts.

More than two-thirds of the Swiss addicts had been involved in prostitution, drug trafficking and other criminal activity when they enrolled in the program. The number dropped to 10 percent, the study showed.

AP-NY-06-07-98 1720EDT

Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.

The Ottawa Citizen is emerging as one of our greatest champions, all the more amazing since I think this is a relatively recent conversion (and I'll send a copy of this to Gene Oscapella in Ottawa to make sure I'm right on that). In any event, here's the story that ran on the front page of yesterday's edition:

Drug laws help only traffickers, prominent criminal lawyer says

Senator, former Ottawa mayor feel 'Just Say No,' just doesn't work

Dawn Walton The Ottawa Citizen

The only thing the world's war on drugs has managed to do is fatten the wallets of a cunning group of drug traffickers, say prominent Canadians who are now asking the United Nations to liberalize drug laws as a preferred anti-narcotics strategy.

"We're spending a huge amount of money on some drugs by criminalizing them and all we seem to be achieving is to create a group of very rich people," said Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby. "So let's stop and decriminalize some drugs. Marijuana is the obvious one."

Mr. Ruby is among more than 600 international signatories to a petition that asks for the world's hard line on drugs to be softened. The petition will be presented to the UN General Assembly when it convenes tomorrow for a conference designed to discuss international drug policy.

At the conference, the UN is expected to approve another $4 billion in spending on the global battle against illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin and marijuana.

Already, anti-drug forces around the world have spent billions on what is regarded as a failure by an international list of dignitaries, authors, academics and politicians. By the UN's own estimates, the additional funding is just a drop in the bucket compared with the $400 billion U.S. a year the illegal drug trade generates worldwide.

Former Ottawa mayor Marion Dewar says the ongoing international drug strategy has been a disappointment and needs a serious overhaul.

"The Americans have spent billions on 'Just Say No,' which doesn't work," she said. "Our attitude (in Canada) is pretty much just the same thing. We're going to make sure that nobody ever takes drugs and yet we're not very good on the nicotine stuff, which is a very serious drug as far as health is concerned.

"If we can open up the laws, get some international standards, then what you start to do is get rid of all the black markets where the fortunes are being made."

Drug policy reform groups, which co-ordinated the lobby effort, say the global war on drugs has actually compromised human rights and human health, sent needless numbers of people to prisons and caused environmental degradation.

"We're spending huge amounts of money with no return," Mr. Ruby said. "(Prisons) don't successfully take out the hidden mafia. You don't successfully take out the people who are really doing it well. What you wind up getting is those who are at the bottom end who are inadequate and sloppy and careless -- the ones who don't have the resources."

Liberal Senator Sharon Carstairs, another signatory to the petition, agrees the drug problem should be treated as a public health issue rather than a criminal matter.

"In this country alone we spend millions of dollars on prosecuting people for simple possession of marijuana, when I think that money would be far more usefully spent trying to convince young people that drugs are not the way they should be going," she said.

Meanwhile, a growing sector of Canada's population is being treated as if they were criminals rather than the victims.

"If we could start treating our people who are addicts and recognizing that it is a health issue, we'd be doing a lot more than incarcerating them," Ms. Dewar added.

Despite the increasing momentum to change drug strategies to cope with these realities, neither the public nor the politicians are entirely convinced that liberalization is the way to go.

"It's going to take political will," Mrs. Carstairs said. "Unfortunately, in my view, under the previous administration we joined in the so-called war on drugs. We made certain commitments to the United States, which I think has tied our hands."

Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan was largely responsible for driving the prohibition on drugs in the 1980s. Former prime minister Brian Mulroney joined Mr. Reagan's crusade and, subsequently, Canadian political parties have largely avoided the issue of decriminalization.

In 1996, Mrs. Carstairs chaired a Senate committee that examined a bill -- later passed -- that significantly expanded the reach of Canada's drug laws and continues Canada's heavy reliance on criminal prohibition.

"We didn't feel at that time that we could amend the bill and decriminalize the use of marijuana. But we did file a report in the Senate at that time, which indicated that the majority of us believed that the government should seriously consider the decriminalization of marijuana."

Current leaders in both Canada and the U.S. -- having inherited a powerful anti-drug sentiment -- have maintained the status quo.

"What's going to be very difficult for both of them is to change the direction of that legacy," Mrs. Carstairs said.

International Signatories

Here are a selection of prominent world figures who have signed the petition asking the UN to work toward liberalized drug laws

Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Nobel Laureate (Peace) Argentina Peter Baume, Former Cabinet Minister and Chancellor of the Australian National University Lidya Gueiler Tejada, Former President of Bolivia Belisario Betancur, Former President of Columbia Oscar Arias, Nobel Laureate (Peace) and Former President of Costa Rica Erling Olsen, Former Minister of Justice, Denmark Michele Barzach, Former Minister of Health, France Sabine Leutheuser-Schnarrenberger, Former Justice Minister, Germany Haim Cohn, Former Deputy President of the Israel Supreme Court Monica Bettoni-Brandani, Undersecretary of State for Health, Italy Andreas van Agt, Former Prime Minister of the Netherlands Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, Former President of Nicaragua Nicolaus Bloembergen, Nobel Laureate, (Physics) Walter Cronkite, Broadcaster, the United States Joycelyn Elders, Former U.S. Surgeon General Ahmet Ertegun, Chairman, Atlantic Records Milton Friedman, Senior Research Fellow, Stanford University Ira Glasser, Executive Director, The American Civil Liberties Union Patrick Murphy, Former Police Commissioner of New York City George Soros, Chairman, Soros Fund Management Anita Roddick, Founder of the Body Shop Edward Ellison, Retired Head of Scotland Yard Drug Squad George Papandreou, Alternate Foriegn Minister of Greece Jesus Silva Herzog, Former Mexican Ambassador to the United States Stanley Crossick, Chairman of the European Policy Centre in Belgium Willie Brown, mayor of San Francisco Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women's Health Coalition Simon Alberto Consalvi, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Venezuela Allan Wagner, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Peru. Martin Short, author, Britain

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, March 30, 1998 Source: ACLU

DENVER -- The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado today filed suit in federal court charging that federal Job Corps officials conducted an illegal strip search last year of a busload of young Job Corps participants at the federal agency's facility in Collbran, Colorado.

According to the lawsuit, 25 to 30 young persons were forced to submit to the strip search when they returned to the Collbran Job Corps Center after spending a weekend outside the live-in facility. The Collbran Center, operated by the U.S. Department of Labor, provides a residential education and vocational training program for disadvantaged youth.

The suit alleges that Job Corps officials acted on nothing more than a "rumor" that one of the program participants might be bringing drugs into the facility. No drugs were ever found.

The ACLU sued on behalf of Alisha McKay, who was seventeen years old and five months pregnant on March 30, 1997, when the search occurred. She has no criminal record and no history of involvement with illegal drugs.

After the bus arrived at the Center, the suit alleges, each teenager's backpack was searched, but no contraband was found. Federal officials then divided the males and females into separate groups.

The young Job Corps participants were then ordered, two at a time, into a small bathroom, where the searches were conducted. Outside the room where the boys were searched, a Job Corps official snapped a rubber glove and taunted the young people.

Once inside the girls' bathroom, the lawsuit alleges, McKay and another young woman were ordered to stand side by side, remove their clothes, spread their legs apart, and squat as a Job Corps official inspected their genitals. The plaintiff was told that if she did not submit to the strip search and body cavity inspection, she would be terminated from the Job Corps program "on the spot."

"Once again, constitutional rights are the innocent casualties of the war on drugs," said Mark Silverstein, ACLU Legal Director. "The Fourth Amendment forbids unreasonable searches. And a mere rumor that some unspecified individual might have drugs does not authorize the government to conduct a blanket strip search of an entire busload of passengers. It certainly cannot justify subjecting two dozen teenagers to this senseless, degrading ordeal."

"Our client, a pregnant minor, was angry, upset, and humiliated," said Greg Whitehair of the law firm of Patton Boggs, who, along with Susan Brienza, is serving as an ACLU volunteer cooperating attorney.

"She has asked us to hold these government officials fully accountable for this blatant violation of the Constitution, so that no Job Corps participants will ever have to endure what she went through," Whitehair added.

The lawsuit names five Job Corps employees as defendants and asks for compensation, punitive damages, and an injunction to prevent similar incidents in the future.

Newshawk: Art Smart

ArtSmart@neosoft.com

Pubdate: Sun, 11 Apr 1998

Source: Houston Chronicle

Contact:viewpoints@chron.com

Ban tobacco like marijuana and cocaine

By CARL T. ROWAN

THE local drug pusher cornered the president of the United States at a fund-raiser and said:

"Cocaine has been good. We paid for our mansion off cocaine. We educated our kids off cocaine. We paved our old driveway with blacktop off cocaine. We pay our property taxes. We pay the preacher on Sunday morning. We overhaul our vehicles, and we buy tires. We pay our insurance. And we pay our mules and runners, and give them Social Security and Medicare. And we just try to live right and do right off cocaine."

Replace the word "cocaine" with "tobacco" and you pretty much have the emotional speech that tobacco farmer Mattie Mack gave to President Clinton in Brandenburg, Ky., Thursday.

"Aw, come on," you say, "tobacco is legal and cocaine is not, and you can't compare the two."

That's my point. I can compare them in terms of the damage they do to their addicted users, but I can't compare their legal status. Yet I know that there will be no solution to the curse of tobacco in this society until it is banned just like marijuana and cocaine are, and there probably won't be a solution even then.

I never believed last summer that the tobacco companies would pay $368.5 billion and accept the terms of the state attorneys general, of the president and Congress, and of the health-care industry just to stay in business with curtailed prosperity. Tobacco is such a golden goose that I knew the industry would find some excuse ... like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raising the payment to $516 billion over 25 years ... to say that it would rather fight than switch.

Clinton said in Kentucky Thursday, "I do not want to put the tobacco companies out of business. I do want to put them out of the business of selling cigarettes to teen-agers."

The tobacco tycoons have always known that if they can't sell cigarettes to teen-agers, they are putting themselves out of business. A 14-year-old who reaches 24 without smoking is very unlikely to take up the filthy, killing habit.

That is why tobacco industry leaders have lied to America for generations about the deliberate boosting of nicotine levels, the ad campaigns targeted at teen-agers, the special lures for minority members. The tobacco industry knows where survival and prosperity lie. And that is why the tobacco bosses have brazenly declared war on legislation that would increase the cost of cigarettes sharply by raising taxes on tobacco products; would give the Food and Drug Administration power to regulate the levels of addictive nicotine in tobacco products; and restrict drastically the advertising and marketing practices of tobacco companies.

Big Tobacco has taken a colossal gamble that farmers like Mack, the millions of people who already are hooked on nicotine and the Republican Party will rise up and help them to maintain something close to the status quo. The tobacco moguls seem to think that handing out a few billion dollars in campaign contributions and sugar-coated bribes will provide more protection than any $516 billion settlement.

But recent exposes of perfidy by the tobacco industry, and revelations of the health tragedies caused by tobacco, have made it politically impossible for Republicans to provide the shelter that the tobacco industry expects.

So there will be legislation. But it probably won't be the "new Prohibition." It will be tough enough to make a lot of farmers think of growing collard greens, and force a lot of tobacco company employees to look for work elsewhere. But it won't put tobacco in the same pipe with cocaine. So a semi-black market for tobacco will arise, the health problems will endure, and our politicians will wring their hands and give more speeches.

And all the hopes of protecting teen-agers, and of using tobacco settlement money for noble causes, will go up in schoolyard smoke.

Rowan is a syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.

*** FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, April 10, 1998 ***

Oregon Supreme Court trashes 4th Amendment protections

Week 6: STOP THE MARIJUANA TASK FORCE, PRAY FOR "DRUG PEACE!"

Portland, Oregon -- History will note Thursday, April 9, 1998 as a very dark day for Oregonians protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

Drug war apologist will claim the police need this latitude to be more effective. They are right. If you buy the prohibition model we now labor under.

Rich Republicans give a wink and a nod. After they arrogantly ask why did it take so long to give police this expanded power to search at will? After all they will sing, only the guilty would object.

Many liberals will wring their hands, feign concern ... but hey this is "war," they will rationalize. We must "protect the kids," and if it means sacrificing rights for a little more safety then so be it. They are right. In fact if we were to suspend all rights and subject everyone to random drug tests we could fill an athletic stadium and simply execute them all. Wala, a "drug free" Oregon. Wouldn't it be grand? Messy, but grand.

Antiprohibitionists do not equivocate on the problem, the very real problem of drug abuse in our society and especially among the young. It is a terrible problem and it's getting worse all the time.

How long will we keep doing the same thing, expecting different results?

Our state government has a schizophrenic drug policy. While we do more than most other states to treat abuse and provide harm reduction (e.g. needle exchange), even drug courts. Yet it persist on misappropriating the lion's share of "drug" dollars to futile and pernicious enforcement, ever expanding prisons.

It's obvious which approach our state's high court prefers. The ramifications could be with us for a very long time to come. Read the summary below, if it does not scare you then you should read the Constitution of these here United States and this here Oregon State to see just how far we have drifted from the original intent.

On April 9, 1998, the Oregon Supreme Court decided the case summarized below. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

State v. Martin (SC S44459)

HOLDING: A police officer has probable cause to arrest a man who exhibits behavior consistent with a drug transaction in a place known as a center of drug activity.

SUMMARY: Martin was charged with unlawful delivery and unlawful possession of cocaine after a warrantless search on his person found cocaine. The arresting officer testified that he observed Martin standing on a corner well known for drug transactions. When hailed by the occupant of a van stopping at the corner, Martin looked around as if to assure himself that he would not be observed before approaching the van. Martin subsequently reached into the van and then appeared to place something in his back pocket. Martin was again observed on the same corner approximately two hours later. The trial court concluded that since the officer failed to see any object in Martin's hand, the officer lacked an objective basis for the arrest. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

The Supreme Court concluded that under the totality of the circumstances, the officer's conclusions were objectively reasonable. Because of the officer's knowledge of the corner as a "drive-up drug dispensing location" and the specific actions he observed, he had probable cause to arrest the defendant and the search was lawful.

source: Oregon Court News, 4/9/98, Willamette University Law Online

***

Week 6: STOP THE MARIJUANA TASK FORCE

PROTEST, SPEAK-OUT AGAINST THE MTF & PRAY FOR "DRUG PEACE!" EVERY FRIDAY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE 4:00P.M. - 6:00P.M. PARK BLOCK ACROSS FROM "JUSTICE" CENTER (1120 S.W. 3rd., downtown Portland, Oregon) ***

"Suspend & Review" Endorsements

Lee Berger, local attorney

Radical Women Cannabis Liberation Society

Gary L. Dye, candidate Metro Dist. 7

Lewis & Clark College Hemp Club

Stuart Sugarman, local attorney

N.O.R.M.L., Portland/Vancouver

Spencer M. Neal, local attorney

Pacific Party, Portland

James Brewster, Lib candidate U.S. Senate

Jim Redden,

PDXS

Dr. Ruben Botello,

Amer. Homeless Society

Paul Loney, local attorney

Oregonians for Personal Privacy Medical Health Rights

Stan Khan,

Pacific Party Dist 14 D. Paul Stanford,

Demo Dist. 14

--Thomas Jefferson

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel Adams

"Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom? Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American. The unlimited power of the sword, is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people." --Tench Coxe 1788

"The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themsleves against tyranny in government." --Thomas Jefferson

"Make honor and integrity your first object. Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give up the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act." --Thomas Jefferson

FALSE STIGMA ON DRUGS

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

IN THE ongoing flurry about legalizing marijuana (and other drugs), we hear again and again the complaint that the last thing society wishes to do is to communicate that it "favors" the use of drugs. This is the most stubborn of modern social superstitions, the equivalent of the assumption that money flowing to the states from Washington doesn't cost the taxpayers anything, a fantasy widespread among children and Democrats. "At a time when we are trying to keep people from buying drugs, we don't want to send them the signal that it's OK to buy them," one commentator said on television Sunday. When a society decides to authorize the production of a good, there is no more reason to suppose that there is a popular approval of that good than there is to assume that Congress likes Dr Pepper because you can buy it on the street. It pays to go back to the axioms of a free society, among which is that government should not stand athwart a willing buyer and a willing seller. The exceptions begin: The government, representing the will of the people, can and does prohibit the circulation of medical drugs until they are licensed by federal laboratories. There are many complaints about delays almost fetishistic in character. And yes, it is true that because the Food and Drug Administration is so slow in approving new drugs, Americans sometimes find themselves needing to go to Canada or France or wherever to get them. Now it is acceded that marijuana and cocaine would never get by the FDA. The latter, taken in doses too heavy, can kill. The former is psychoactive. But instantly we recognize an irregularity in government practice, because, of course, alcohol can kill, and the whole point in consuming it is precisely that it is psychoactive. To concede the authority of the state to bar the sale of a medical drug is not to undertake to establish that the government always acts consistently. No death from marijuana has ever been recorded. It would be a good year if fewer than 400,000 deaths were attributable to tobacco. But the approval of the sale of alcohol and tobacco does not mean that society "condones" their consumption. Indeed, in the case of tobacco, the government is here and there engaged in persuading people not to smoke, by advertising the surgeon general's recommendations of the subject and forbidding its manufacturers to advertise their product on radio or television. There are few calls on Congress to prohibit the sale of tobaccos for one primary reason, which is that the prospect of keeping 46 million tobacco users from their narcotic is a job the government simply wouldn't want to undertake. Its experience with Prohibition demonstrated the inadvisability of trying to stop running water with a screen. But nobody is going around saying that the government "approves" of either drug. The ACLU and others vigorously defend the ; right of pornographers to ply their trade. The lawyer/who defended Harry Reems, the star-stud of "Deep Throat," enjoyed revealing to interrogators that he had never seen the movie and never would. Alan Dershowitz was making the point that he distinguished between patronizing the blue movie and defending the right of those who wished to patronize it to do so. The point is not unmistakably clear -- that a free society is bound to defend the franchise of the pornographer -- but the distinction is absolutely clear, that to license an activity is not necessarily to approve it. There are many arguments for licensing brothels -- and indeed, here and there in Nevada they are legal. The primary argument is that since some people are going to buy sex, it makes sense to see to it that they buy it from sellers who need to submit every fortnight or so to medical examination. It is a not incidental argument in favor of licensing drugs that the buyer can know that what he is buying is free of extraneous materials, and is of the specified toxicity. Some who favor legalizing drugs for one reason alone -- namely, that the consumption of them can't be regulated by law unless we pursue policies against pushers that we simply aren't willing to engage in (cutting off their fingers, for example) -- favor, at the same time, vigorous programs precisely designed to condemn those who exercise the freedom to walk into a federal drugstore for cocaine. They should feel the obloquy of their fellow citizens. They should be denied preferences and experience the disdain that, bit by bit, crystallizes against the tobacco user, reaching effective form where tobacco is flatly but effectively prohibited: in airplanes and in the White House. How silly it is to suppose that society approves of everything it tolerates. Do we all approve of 2 Live Crew?

Drugs: Time for Legalization

NYT February 28 1994

Ediror's note: Five years after President George Bush declared war on drugs, Latin American intellectuals are starting to say that the emperor has no clothes. Critics charge that the war has not dented the flow of cocaine and marijuana to U.S. streets and that drug mafias are richer than ever. Taking a radically new tack, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia's Nobel Prize-winning novelist, has written a manifesto calling for controlled worldwide legalization. First published in Spain's Cambio 16 magazine, and translated here by Edith Grossman, the manifesto has drawn in recent weeks the signatures of 2000 Latin intellectuals -- from lefttists who believe that prohibition is not the best way to fight addiction, to rightists who argue that bullets cannot break the laws of supply and demand.

By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

PROHIBITION has made the drug trade more attractive and profitable, encouraging criminality and corruption at all levels. And yet the United States behaves as if it were not aware of this fact. Colombia, despite limited resources and thousands of casualties, has eradicated numerous gangs and filled its prisons with drug criminals. At least four of the most important capos are behind bars, and the most important one of all is at bay. In the United States, however, 20 million drug addicts have no problem obtaining their daily supplyðsomething that is possible only because of much larger and more efficient internal networks for marketing and distribution. Given this situation, the drug polemic must not continue to be caught between war and permissiveness, but should grab the bull by the horns at last and focus on the ways in which legalization can be administered. This means putting an end to the self-seeking, pernicious useless war the consuming countries have inflicted on us, and confronting the drug problem throughout the world as a fundamental ethical and political question that can be defined clearly only by an international agreement, with the United States on the front lines. And, of course, serious commitments will be needed by the consuming nations to the producing nations. For it surely would not be just if those of us who suffered the terrible consequences of the war were then left without the benefits of peace. In other words, if what happened to Nicaragua were to happen to us: It was the top priority worldwide during the war; now, in peace, it has dropped to the bottom of the list.

DRUG WAR IS A LOST CAUSE -- LIKE PROHIBITION

Using teenagers as informants is sometimes the only option that police have.

Sixteen-year-old Jonathan Kollman had been clean for several months--a struggle, but he was hanging in there. Then he ran into this babe in a red sports car who offered to buy him a fix. For a fragile teenager holding on by his fingernails, it was one temptation too many. He made the buy and 10 minutes later, he was back in the jaws of the dragon with heroin in his veins.

But what of the Dragon Lady? Who was this evil temptress? Turns out she was a cop--an undercover narcotics officer from the Plano, Texas, police department who needed an informant. Playing on the kid's vulnerability, she reintroduced him to his habit, and once he was rehooked, she was able to use him for a half dozen drug buys.

If you believe the end justifies the means, this little operation would have to be considered a resounding success--three dozen people busted for selling or holding heroin, including Kollman. But a lot of the folks in Plano are uneasy about this business of using kids as offensive weapons in the drug war. The boy's parents, for example--having just waged a titanic battle to free their son from addiction--are understandably dismayed that it was the police who turned him on again.

But for all their trauma, Jonathan Kollman's parents are lucky. Chad MacDonald Jr.'s mother probably would trade places with them in a second. When her son's badly damaged young frame was found in an alley south of downtown Los Angeles last month, it was revealed that he, too, had been lured into the service of the law. Earlier in the year, the Brea Police Department in Orange County had captured MacDonald with a half ounce of methamphetamine, and they apparently saw in him the makings of a useful snitch.

After MacDonald's arrest in January 1998 on charges of possession of methamphetamine, the Brea police offered Chad and his mother a deal, and the pressure must have been intense because they went for it in spite of the obvious danger. Rather than treat his addiction, the deal dropped this high school student unprepared into the boiling pot of cutthroats who populate the illegal drug trade. Since these guys are often facing 10 or 20 years if they're caught, they disdain informants--a fact they underscored by torturing the kid before killing him and then raping and shooting his girlfriend and leaving her for dead in the San Gabriel Mountains.

Undoubtedly this is an arrangement that everybody involved wishes they had to do over again, but the truth is, we're likely to see more of this kind of thing in the future, not less.

Consider the problem from the cops' viewpoint. You have a bunch of high school kids dealing drugs to one another in private. How do you break into this closed circle? That's the intractable nexus of the war on drugs, the thing that has driven our ongoing assault on the Bill of Rights for more than 80 years. In a drug deal, there's no complaining witness. Most other criminals--the rapist, the robber, the ax murderer--have somebody chasing them or have victims or survivors demanding justice.

But when there's nobody to call the cops, the cops have little choice. To break up what is essentially a private transaction, they inevitably have to resort to some subterfuge that will trample the Constitution, whether it's turning your kid into a junkie or splintering your front door without bothering to knock or forcing you to the pavement because you happen to be a black man in an expensive car. It is the nature of the drug war itself that creates this ethical quagmire, not the perversity of the police. Brea Chief William Lentini was simply trying his best to carry out the impossible task we've handed him.

Our hands are hardly clean on this issue. The latest polls show that 70% of the American people think the drug war is a failure--and that we should keep at it. As President Clinton has pointed out, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

Like a man who has set his hair on fire and is trying to put it out with a hammer, we will continue to pulverize our principles and devour our young until the drug war's violence and corruption finally reachs every nook and cranny of our lives. Only then will we face the fact, as we did with alcohol prohibition in 1933, that the problem is not what's in the bottle, but how we've chosen to deal with it.

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Mike Gray's latest book, "Drug Crazy: How We Got Into This Mess and How We Can Get Out," will be published by Random House in June

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