War On Drugs

NACHOSA Harper, a 19-year-old resident of Gaithersburg, is in a state of high dudgeon. Four years ago her family moved from the war zone that drug dealers have made of Baltimore's Park Heights. Now the drug trade has reared its insidious head in Gaithersburg.But it's not the drug dealers who especially gall Ms. Harper. It's the complicity in the drug trade of legitimate business people who knowingly do business with drug dealers. Car dealers and electronic pager companies especially draw her ire."

Let me start with this: If not for the absurd war on drugs — by far, the nation's longest war — we would not have had so many killings on the streets of Baltimore over the years. The United States leads the world in incarceration. Without the war on drugs, thousands of men and women would be home with their families instead of in cellblocks; they might even be employed. There would be less social dysfunction and community upheaval. There would be less crime overall. If not for the war on drugs, now in its fifth decade, we would not have gangsters, like the reputed Black Guerrilla Family leaders Eric Brown and Tavon White.

Nichelle Nicole Preston should be preparing for cheerleading practice at Glen Burnie High School. Instead, she is dead. She died a week shy of her 17th birthday, from inhaling butane fumes from a can. There are many senseless ways to die, but it is hard to imagine a greater waste than this.So far, the war on drugs has isolated the "sexy" drugs -- cocaine, heroin, marijuana -- as the enemy while ignoring cruder but equally dangerous substances like butane. That has been a mistake.Though deaths from inhalant abuse are rare, Ms. Preston's tragedy reflects what experts say is a growing trend toward abuse of cheap, easily obtained household items -- metallic spray paints, solvents, cleaning fluids, gasoline, even the "white-out" used for typewriter corrections.

Congratulations to Bob Ehrlich for pointing out that the United States, the supposed "land of the free," is now the largest jailer nation in the world ("Obama's unpardonable neglect of clemency," Jan. 13). This country is using its own legal system to tear itself apart, and for what? It's a word no one dares use, but it's what we have here in America - prohibition, also known as the "war on drugs. " And I applaud Mr. Ehrlich for pointing in the right direction, but tinkering with parole and pardons is little more than arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The pictures up on the screen showed hordes of people enjoying themselves in a tie-dye fantasy world where licking little pictures of Woodstock or inhaling balloons full of laughing gas are merely part of the fun."There's a real sense of togetherness at one of these Grateful Dead concerts," said Michael College, a state police narcotics officer."It's real nostalgic. It's almost like you expect to see Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix come out and play a song."College was showing slides of concerts to the more than 500 parents, school officials and students who virtually filled a Liberty High auditorium Wednesdaynight for a drug-use forum.

Few studies have created more discussion and controversy than a recent report that 56 percent of black males 18 to 35 years old have been snagged in Baltimore's criminal justice system.The director of the group behind that research, Herbert J. Hoelter, 42, lives in the Ten Hills neighborhood of West Baltimore. His group, based in Alexandria, Va., is the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives (NCIA).Before co-founding NCIA, Mr. Hoelter was an assistant to the Pennsylvania Commissioner on Children and Youth.

A LITTLE news for the many Jamal Lewis fans -- of whom I am one -- who think the Baltimore Ravens' great running back is a victim of an overzealous federal prosecutor reaching too far to make a case out of the word "Yeah," uttered during a cellular telephone call four years ago: We're still at war. In case you missed it, the U.S. government has been engaged in a war on drugs since Jamal Lewis was a toddler. Ronald Reagan declared the war in 1982, and Poppy Bush escalated it in 1989. Congress has increased the legal weaponry of federal agencies and prosecutors, and forced mandatory minimum sentencing on judges.

READ IT and scream. The story is about a man named Andrew Chambers. The Los Angeles Times and St. Louis Post-Dispatch are among the newspapers that have written about Chambers, who may become a symbol for everything that is wrong with the "war on drugs." For 16 years, Chambers was an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. His snitching led to the arrests of more than 400 suspects and the seizure of $6 million in assets. That's the good news. But the bad news is very bad. Chambers lied under oath on 16 different occasions.

REGRETTABLY, Baltimore often has been considered the nation's heroin haven, and it remains among the top heroin-abusing cities. It has among the most hospitalizations, treatment cases and heroin-related crime; 35.8 percent of those arrested last year tested positive for heroin. From 1994 to 1998, the frequency of drug-related emergency room visits in the Baltimore area was nearly triple the national rate. More Baltimore residents died of drug overdoses (324) than by homicide (309) in 1999.

LAST WEEK, actor Robert Downey Jr. was arrested in a Palm Springs, Calif., hotel and charged with possession of cocaine and methamphetamine. On Oct. 30, Maryland State Police Cpl. Edward M. Toatley, working undercover, was shot to death by a suspected drug dealer. Yes, the two incidents do have a connection. Both graphically illustrate the futility and travesty of our "war on drugs," a conflict in which both Downey and Toatley are only the latest casualties. Downey was just a few months out of jail - where he had been cooling his heels as a result of a previous drug charge - and had appeared in a few episodes of the Fox television series "Ally McBeal," when he was minding his own business, harming no one but himself, in a hotel room.

The death of a Reisterstown man who was not the subject of a police arrest warrant during a SWAT team raid this summer unfortunately is nothing new ("Reisterstown fatality raises concerns about police raids," Aug. 9). Since President Reagan initiated the so-called "war on drugs" in 1981, these tactics have become increasingly common. SWAT teams were originally intended for violent situations. Today, however, they are deployed quite regularly, often to serve narcotics warrants as part of this misguided and racially biased "war on drugs.

Regarding your recent article about Baltimore's drug problem, anyone whom has visited a city courthouse, taken a police ride-along or grown up in one of the city's poorer black communities knows there is a war going on here ("Anti-drug-war cop wants Baltimore police commissioner opening," July 26). That war is being fought for unclear reasons with horrific results. The official name for it is the "war on drugs," but a more apt name would be the war on reason. Prohibition has failed, and the effects it is having on Baltimore are far worse than those of the city's high property tax rate.

Contrary to letter writer Robert Sharpe's view, the war on drugs is more than war on people who smoke marijuana ("American's misguided war against marijuana," Jan. 1). It is a civil war on the fundamental rights to property, liberty and privacy that are secured by the 4 t h , 5 t h and 14 t h amendments to the Constitution. Responsible users of marijuana pose no threat to public safety, unlike those who abuse alcohol. The biggest threat to public safety comes from organized crime, gangs and the continued criminalization of marijuana.

In what is easily the concert of the season, Jay-Z and Kanye West perform Tuesday at 1st Mariner Arena. The two are promoting their collaboration, "Watch the Throne," which was released earlier this year and divided critics who either loved its ambition or were disappointed with the sum of its parts. The concert, though, is a meeting of two titans of the industry. Also this week: Halloween parties finish up, Oxes, Mister Heavenly, and dance parties at Lith Hall, Club Hippo and the Get Down.

Attorney General Eric Holder recently made a public plea for another season of "The Wire," and now David Simon says he'll do it. But only if Holder does something for him. "The Attorney-General's kind remarks are noted and appreciated," Simon wrote in an email to The Times of London. "I've spoken to Ed Burns and we are prepared to go to work on season six of The Wire if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanising drug prohibition.

Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton was a guest host on MSNBC the other night, and he and guest James Peterson of Lehigh University made the case that the "War on Drugs" has largely been a war on poor African-Americans.  In a segment called "Crack Justice," Sharpton and Peterson discussed a proposal backed by Attorney General Eric Holder that would retroactively correct sentencing disparities for prisoners who received longer sentences for...

The Alliance for a Drug-Free Annapolis is looking for volunteers to help plot the course of the city's war on drugs.The alliance won a $1 million grant to fight drug abuse last year. Now it is looking for volunteers to serve on six groups that will plan the alliance's anti-drug efforts.Kathy Miller, chairwoman of the alliance, asked for volunteers atthe group's annual meeting Wednesday night."The success of the alliance depends on us being able to work together as a community," she said in a speech to the group.

When the nation's drug czar visited Friday, the recovering addicts at Tuerk House in West Baltimore did a little showing off. Those taking the culinary jobs training course whipped up a lavish breakfast. Those in the landscaping and maintenance program spruced up the grounds. "It's been a blessing to me," Mack Campbell, 56, said of the program that he hopes will finally break his personal cycle of addiction, imprisonment and relapse. "I'm learning how to live without drugs. " Inside, Gil Kerlikowske was offering much the same message — but on a broader level.