Drug War

Two foot soldiers in President Bush's drug war came to Towson yesterday to examine a new weapon -- a computer that plots Baltimore County's worst drug neighborhoods.They left impressed."I really like the program," said Severin L. Sorensen, a special assistant in the Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House. "This is a very positive approach to using technology to help limited resources go further."The computer program, called the Substance Abuse Tracking System (SATS), takes the locations of drug arrests and complaints, and areas with the most people in drug treatment programs, and converts the information into maps county officials use to direct enforcement and treatment efforts.

MEXICO CITY -Asserting that the United States shares blame for Mexico's drug violence, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised more equipment and support to help the country's war on traffickers Clinton said the United States has a duty to help because it is a major consumer of illicit drugs and a key supplier of weapons smuggled to the cartels. "We know very well that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States, that they are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States to Mexico," Clinton said Wednesday at a news conference with Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa.

I HAVE SERVED on the front lines of the war on drugs. I am reporting back that it is a failure. Last year I received a Navy achievement medal for my military service in the drug war. Last month I returned this medal to President Clinton to protest his proposed $1.7 billion special appropriation for Colombia. Under the guise of fighting drugs, this aid package will dramatically escalate U.S. military involvement in Colombia's civil war. Colombians are exhausted and dispirited after 40 years of civil strife.

"LET ME GET this straight: A young, promising college student gets involved with a drug dealer, becomes a mule carrying weapons for this miscreant and then refuses to cooperate with authorities on his whereabouts." Thus began an e-mail from Kurt Heinrich on one Kemba Smith, who did 6 1/2 years in federal prison for her role in drug dealer Peter Michael Hall's narcotics ring. She was sentenced to a 24-year mandatory minimum sentence but was pardoned by former President Bill Clinton and released in December.

THE USE OF illegal drugs is probably the most serious problem facing America and most other nations because increasing numbers of users are chancing addiction, irreversible physical or mental impairment and death. Yet Americans spend an estimated $63.2 billion annually on these drugs while, globally, the price tag is around $400 billion. Added to this is the astronomical toll exacted on society. Workplace accidents, production losses, increases in crime, victimization, hospital, court, prison and related impacts cost Americans about $110 billion annually.

One hundred and ninety six people were murdered in Baltimore last year. Recent figures show our violent crime rate is more than two and a half times the national average. Many of these crimes spawned from the illegal nature of the drug trade, and the vast majority of them will go unsolved because so much police time is spent arresting drug users and low-level dealers. But this weekend, a cross-country caravan of victims of the drug war brings a message of change to Baltimore. Dozens of Mexican and U.S.-based drug war survivors, law enforcement officers and others with firsthand experience with failed drug laws have been traveling for weeks now, educating people about the destruction our policies have wrought and the futility of continuing them.

WASHINGTON -- As governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton authorized a criminal investigation of his own brother for selling cocaine. As president, he termed drug abuse as serious a problem as the nation confronts. He appointed a respected police official as his drug policy director while also setting as his goal drug treatment "on demand."His words have been well-received by those fighting the drug war, from Drug Enforcement Administration agents working undercover to counselors in drug treatment centers in the country's blighted big cities.

Although their race is listed as one of a handful of tossups in the increasingly nasty battle for control of Congress, Helen Delich Bentley and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger were strikingly civil to each other yesterday in a debate in which they agreed about almost everything. The candidates for Maryland's 2nd Congressional District seat met for the eighth time in the campaign in a debate taped for Maryland Public Television and agreed almost entirely on a wide range of issues, including war on Iraq, the balance of civil liberties and the fight against terrorism, the response to corporate malfeasance, minimum wage increases and the need for more drug treatment programs.

Although their race is listed as one of a handful of tossups in the increasingly nasty battle for control of Congress, Helen Delich Bentley and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger were strikingly civil to each other yesterday in a debate in which they agreed about almost everything. The candidates for Maryland's 2nd Congressional District seat met for the eighth time in the campaign in a debate taped for Maryland Public Television and agreed almost entirely on a wide range of issues, including war on Iraq, the balance of civil liberties and the fight against terrorism, the response to corporate malfeasance, minimum wage increases and the need for more drug treatment programs.

SALISBURY -- Two weeks after police fired 14 shots into a car at a crowded McDonald's parking lot, anger remains palpable in black neighborhoods throughout this growing Eastern Shore city of 20,000.African-American residents say the wounding of two unarmed men who police believed were carrying a large quantity of crack cocaine is just the latest and worst example of an escalating drug war that has unfairly targeted them. Police say one suspect tried to run them down in his car; residents insist that the gunfire was unnecessary.