War On Drugs

A photo caption in yesterday's Sun incorrectly described the assignment of several police officers seen making a street sweep. The officers, shown arresting a man wanted on a warrant, were from the Northwestern District.The Sun regrets the errors.In assessing the Baltimore Police Department's war on drugs, consider the case of Rodney Curtis, who inhabits one drug corner in one neighborhood of a beleaguered city.Arrested at Fayette and Mount streets in July, Curtis, 19, was soon released and then arrested again for loitering at the West Baltimore corner a month later.

What this country needs most in the crises ahead is hardly a secretary of defense with a bum ticker.Somali armed punks attacked foreign troops for spoiling all their fun.The Supreme Court found a part of the war on drugs that works and knocked it out.

The county's war on drugs has moved to Parole.In a move to better coordinate treatment and prevention programs, the Health Departmentmoved the nine-member Office of Drug and Alcohol Programs next to Open Door, a heavily used outpatient program in Parole Plaza.David W. Almy, the county's new drug czar, and his staff left theArundel Center to work more closely with treatment counselors.County Executive Robert R. Neall decided in May to place the office, formerly an independent agency in the executive branch, under the Health Department's authority.

The recent flap over illegal drug use by White House staff members is a powerful illustration of how the war on drugs piety and the war on drugs hypocrisy are inseparably intertwined.Both the Clinton administration and its Republican critics expound an official policy of "zero tolerance" toward drugs while making allowances for their own "experiments" and youthful indiscretions with controlled substances.The controversy arose after Secret Service agents testified before Congress that at least 21 Clinton White House staff members had used drugs -- including marijuana, cocaine or LSD -- within a year before being granted security clearances.

Mayor Schmoke has now gotten a grand jury of people who have no experience or expertise with illegal drugs to endorse his misguided notion of handing out heroin and cocaine to drug abusers.Considering the huge impact of the drug culture on our society, it's amazing how little even highly educated Americans know -- historically, sociologically and scientifically -- about cocaine and heroin. Like our mayor (and many fellow baby boomers), I too once held similar fuzzy thoughts about legalizing drugs.

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.

NEARLY A decade ago, then-Circuit Judge Kenneth Lavon Johnson questioned why the focus of the war on drugs in Baltimore City was not on the upper echelon of the drug trafficking business, the importer-wholesaler. Since then, only one year has passed in which the murder rate in Baltimore City did not exceed 300. Most of these killings are believed to be related to the illegal drug industry. Our criminal justice systems are flooded with arrests of lower-level street dealers and addicts. As a result, the correctional facilities struggle to house the ever-increasing numbers of these small-time drug defendants.

That shuffling noise emanating from Washington is the sound of Republicans playing political musical chairs. In the latest round of changes, President Bush's national drug policy adviser, William Bennett, will forsake his current post to become chairman of the Republican National Committee. Meanwhile, Florida's Republican Gov. Bob Martinez, who was defeated in his bid for re-election two weeks ago, is in line to carry on the war against drugs as Bennett's successor in Washington.Bennett, you will recall, said he was vacating drug czar's post after proclaiming "substantial progress" had been made in the war on drugs.

THE NATION'S war on drugs has been selective. While police arrest an increasingly large number of blacks on drug charges, they have failed to catch and convict white drug dealers. Blacks are punished far more often than whites on drug charges nationwide. In Maryland, an astounding 90 percent of those serving time on drug charges are black, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. This disparity would seem fair if nine of 10 drug sellers were black, but they aren't. A survey cited in the Human Rights Watch report found that 82 percent of admitted drug sellers were white.

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.