War On Drugs

MEXICO CITY -- The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle in the war on drugs, according to indicators showing that cocaine prices dipped for most of 2006 and American users were getting more bang for their buck. Despite billions of dollars in U.S. anti-drug spending and record seizures, statistics recently released by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy suggest that cocaine is as available as ever. Cocaine users and lawmen care about price and purity.

There is a way to stop Baltimore's murder epidemic. Improve Baltimore's schools. Revive Baltimore's neighborhoods. And it doesn't involve more police, higher taxes or longer prison sentences. Instead, it requires restructuring what is possibly the city's biggest industry. Legalize heroin and cocaine sales, and you erase the economic force behind Baltimore's heartache. Would it lead to new addicts? Of course. Would it send a bad message to kids? Yep. Would it cause problems we can't envisage?

THE DEATHS of five U.S. service personnel in the July 23 crash of a de Haviland RC7 spy plane sent an alarm about U.S. aid to Colombia, now some $289 million a year.The plane was supposedly seeking cocaine operations. It may really have been hunting leftist insurrectionists, whom Colombia's army finds to be the greater enemy. The leftists and narco-terrorists do have mutual interests.A second alarm was the Aug. 5 arraignment in Brooklyn, N.Y., of Laurie Anne Hiett for allegedly mailing nearly 16 pounds of cocaine through the Army Post Office in the U.S. Embassy in Bogota to New York.

Abolish for-profit bingo parlors in Anne ArundelThey are sneaking it through during the holidays when people's minds are on other things.Bay Shore Bingo wants to build a 750-person bingo hall near Annapolis, along Route 5 at the bottom of Bay Dale Drive; 117 Ferguson Road, to be precise.Buses will bring people from far and and an automated teller machine will be handy. All they would need is a few slot machines and, presto, a casino.Let's take a middle ground: that all gambling should profit only the state or non-profit groups and that all gambling be meticulously regulated and forbidden to those under 21.Some gambling is here to stay.

CARL SAGAN, the late astronomer and prolific author, once wrote a pseudonymous essay touting marijuana as a stimulus to his intellectual work.In fact, according to an article by his biographer in the Aug. 22 San Francisco Examiner magazine, Sagan was an avid pot smoker for most of his life.Not surprisingly, news of the influential astronomer's smoking choice had to hide under a pseudonym or wait until his death, lest he suffer America's puritanical wrath.It's the same wrath currently being ducked by George W. Bush, as he refuses to answer questions about his "rebellious" youth.

WASHINGTON -- The nation's never-ending war on drugs, that perpetual futility, has always fallen most heavily on poor people. This has usually been the result of discriminatory enforcement or, as with laws against crack and cocaine, an unfair penalty structure. The latest blow, however, has led to a direct attack on the poor.Under a floor amendment, proposed by Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican, to the 1996 welfare law and quickly adopted, anyone convicted of a felony for violating either a state or federal drug law after Aug. 22, 1996, can never get food stamps again.

WITH HIS nebulous response to the question of whether he has ever used illegal narcotics, George W. Bush may be doing the nation a great service.The spectacle of the current feeding frenzy is as ugly as always -- but for once the "politics of personal destruction" may encourage an overdue debate about real public policy issues:Are the laws that send thousands of people to prison every year for drug possession administered fairly? Is justice served by incarcerating young, nonviolent drug offenders?

Residents should directly elect school boardThe school board wields a significant amount of power (without taxing authority). It should be accountable to the citizens through elections. More than 90 percent of the school boards in the country are elected.Few issues create as much controversy as redrawing school boundaries, merging schools and changing school policy. Certainly school board members have more effect on the lives of county citizens than some other elected posts such as the Register of Wills.

IN A political world where more and more politicians let their pollsters tell them what to think, it's refreshing to discover Gov. Gary Johnson of New Mexico, a man who says what he thinks.Mr. Johnson has become one of the first high-ranking elected officials to question the war on drugs. "I believe that our war on drugs has been a dismal failure," he told the Taos Chamber of Commerce."We are putting more and more money into a war that we are absolutely losing."Hard to argue with that. The war isn't working, and we should try something different -- namely, getting the federal government out of the business of prohibition and letting the states -- and adult common sense -- decide.

WASHINGTON -- A standoff between the Clinton White House and the Republican-controlled Congress has blocked an emergency, billion-dollar aid package for Colombia, upsetting Colombian officials and adding new instability to a nation racked by civil war, corruption and illegal drugs.Some Clinton administration officials believe the money won't be available until spring at the earliest. That will delay U.S. anti-drug efforts even as Colombian drug shipments to major American cities, including Baltimore, are getting larger, cheaper and more potent.

Walter Cronkite, once the most trusted man in America and a leading figure in broadcast journalism's Mount Rushmore, believed the nation's war on drugs was unwinnable, and he said so on television. A decade after his years with CBS News, Mr. Cronkite succeeded in raising public awareness of the war's futility - an impressive accomplishment. Of course, Mr. Cronkite is famous for having reached the same correct conclusion about the Vietnam War in 1968. All of his obituaries have recalled Mr. Cronkite's special report from Vietnam, his characterization of the war as stalemate and his call for a negotiated peace.

Friday marks 75 years since repeal of the Volstead Act, which made the manufacture, distribution and consumption of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. As the anniversary of the end of Prohibition approaches, modern advocates of a similar repeal are calling again for the decriminalization of heroin, cocaine and marijuana - and this time they've come packing a money argument by a Harvard economist. I like money arguments. They are usually a lot more effective than emotional ones or those that exploit stubborn prejudices with the intent of maintaining the status quo. As the American economy recedes, state and local tax revenues fall and government budgets are cut, the money argument for changing the way we do things - from enforcing the laws to educating children - makes the most sense and has the strongest appeal.

Given the nature and cost of the war on drugs - to the state, to the counties and the cities, to families, to businesses, to neighborhoods, to property values and insurance rates - nothing in the realm of criminal justice screams for more reform than our approach to drug addiction and related criminality. In some way - directly, or through taxation, or in the costs of insurance for homes and motor vehicles - drug addiction touches the lives of every man, woman and child in Maryland. The same is true on a national scale.

Visiting Baltimore last week, President Bush shared his personal struggles against alcohol addiction with former prisoners in recovery who are enrolled in Jericho, a program to help them re-enter productively into society. Mr. Bush recounted having given up alcohol the day after his 40th birthday, after a "particularly boozy night." He often credits his Christian faith for giving him the strength to stay sober. Although his presidency is almost over, it's not too late for Mr. Bush to do much good as a role model and advocate for people recovering from addiction.

ATLANTA -- You don't hear much about the nation's "war on drugs" these days. It's a has-been, a glamourless geezer, a holdover from bygone days. Its glitz has been stolen by the "war on terror," which gets the news media hype and campaign trail rhetoric. Railing against recreational drug use and demanding that offenders be locked away is so '90s. But the drug war proceeds, mostly away from news cameras and photo-ops, still chewing up federal and state resources and casting criminal sanctions over entire neighborhoods.

There is a way to stop Baltimore's murder epidemic. Improve Baltimore's schools. Revive Baltimore's neighborhoods. And it doesn't involve more police, higher taxes or longer prison sentences. Instead, it requires restructuring what is possibly the city's biggest industry. Legalize heroin and cocaine sales, and you erase the economic force behind Baltimore's heartache. Would it lead to new addicts? Of course. Would it send a bad message to kids? Yep. Would it cause problems we can't envisage?

Six weeks ago, it looked as if the governor of Maryland was willing to inject some common sense into the costly and asinine war on drugs. Instead of forcing low-level drug dealers to serve a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison -- at a cost to Maryland taxpayers of $24,000 a year -- O'Malley appeared to support parole for these offenders after a couple of years behind bars. The change would have applied only to nonviolent offenders. It was aimed at the dealer-user -- that is, the drug addict who sells dope to maintain his own habit.

In Washington, there's a sense that many issues regarding the war in Iraq will come to a head in September. The month was specifically referenced 15 times by Tony Snow and White House reporters at the press secretary's Thursday briefing. In September, members of Congress will be returning from their long August recess, when they will have heard from constituents. September is the end of the federal fiscal year, and soon after that, the Bush administration will have to submit another war-funding bill under vastly changed political circumstances.

Time for cease-fire in failed drug war Every bit of data about the drug war indicates that it is a colossal failure ("Data show war on drugs failing as cocaine gets cheaper, purer," May 5). From 1995 to 2005, the federal drug war budget rose 79 percent. During that time, the number of people in the United States who had used drugs in the past year rose 55 percent, drug-induced mortality went up 116 percent, drug arrests went up 25 percent and drug rehab admissions went up 22 percent.

MEXICO CITY -- The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle in the war on drugs, according to indicators showing that cocaine prices dipped for most of 2006 and American users were getting more bang for their buck. Despite billions of dollars in U.S. anti-drug spending and record seizures, statistics recently released by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy suggest that cocaine is as available as ever. Cocaine users and lawmen care about price and purity.