Pubdate: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 Source: Tulsa World (OK) Copyright: 2001 World Publishing Co. Contact: P.O. Box 1770, Tulsa, OK 74102 Website: http://www.tulsaworld.com/ Author: Alex Adwan Note: Alex Adwan is senior editor of the Tulsa World. ARE WE LOSING THE 'WAR ON DRUGS?' President Richard Nixon proclaimed the War on Drugs in 1971. After Vietnam, it became the second major war that America ever lost. The difference was that, unlike Vietnam, no one in authority ever acknowledged the defeat. Thirty years later, the United States has more than 2 million people in prison, mostly on drug-related offenses. By one measure, we have a greater percentage of population behind bars than any country except Rwanda. And we still have the worst drug-abuse record of any industrial country. The federal government has spent nearly $200 billion on this lost cause while the numbers of drug users and drug deaths have continued to rise steadily. In California alone, more than 2,500 drug-related deaths are recorded annually and the toll is growing each year. Nationwide, by any fair estimate, the death toll in the lost war on drugs long ago surpassed the 47,353 battle deaths in Vietnam. Occasionally, Hollywood can get to the heart of a tragic situation better than government statistics. Such is the case with director Steven Soderbergh's new film, "Traffic," about the drug war along the U.S.- Mexican border. Tulsa World movie critic Dennis King's excellent Jan. 5 review outlines the complex plots and evaluates the performances of the film's talented cast. For my purpose, it is enough to say that the movie is a painful but useful reminder of the frustration and failure of U.S. anti-drug policy for the last 30 years. Michael Douglas portrays a fictional Ohio judge who has been nominated as the U.S. drug czar. He learns that his own teenage daughter is a victim of the insidious and uncontrollable traffic. Benicio Del Toro plays an honest Mexican policeman bedeviled by the corruption and violence of the drug trade. The film puts flesh and blood into the statistics of the narcotics trade and spotlights the futility of trying to stop drug use by intercepting a fraction of the illegal traffic. It suggests that money would be better spent on rehabilitation and even legalized maintenance of some addicts. It does not offer any pat answers, however; perhaps because there are none. Legalization of drugs is not a realistic political option in this country. It is not going to happen. There is no guarantee that it would reduce drug use even if accompanied by extensive rehab and counseling programs. Even some advocates of legalization admit that legalization might lead to more drug abuse. But the Netherlands and a few other countries have shown that legal and controlled access to drugs can eliminate the criminal traffic and the accompanying violence and corruption. The best hope is for a new emphasis on rehabilitation and help for drug addicts, an effort to dry up demand even while continuing the nearly hopeless effort to dry up the supply. There are hopeful signs. Only this week, New York's Republican Gov. George Pataki proposed to replace mandatory imprisonment with treatment for some drug defendants while reducing prison sentences for others. His program would get some comparatively harmless users out of overcrowded prisons and into treatment centers. They would be given at least a chance to become useful, taxpaying citizens. Meanwhile, the war goes on. Drug agents grab a small part of the increasing traffic, enough to keep the price high and worth the risk, but never enough to seriously disrupt the supply. In 1993, the National Household Survey On Drug Abuse showed that 46 percent of America's teens had been offered drugs by illicit vendors. By 1999, the percentage had grown to 54 percent. During the same time, the number of drug users increased from 12.3 million to 14.8 million. The number of heroin users grew from 68,000 in 1993 to 208,000 in 1999. Thirty years after President Nixon's declaration of war, illegal dope remains one of America's fastest-growing and most prosperous businesses. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake