Pubdate: Sat, 12 May 2001
Source: Anchorage Daily News (AK)
Copyright: 2001 The Anchorage Daily News
Contact:  http://www.adn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/18
Author: Lois Gilbert
Note: Lois Gilbert is a former University of Alaska Anchorage adjunct
history professor and high school teacher who has worked as a
counselor in Alaska shelters for abused teens.

TREATMENT IS BEST ALLY IN DRUG WAR

A Baptist missionary and her baby were the latest casualties of supply-side 
drug policies.

The CIA-run program downs planes suspected of running drugs from Columbia 
to Peru. No little niceties like jury trials or even trials. Force 'em down 
or shoot 'em down, all in the name of the war on drugs.

One bullet tore through Veronica Bowers' heart and her baby's head. While 
Jim Bowers fought flames with a fire extinguisher, pilot Kevin Donaldson 
landed the missionary float plane on the Amazon River despite his 
bullet-mangled leg.

In the name of national sovereignty, Peru wouldn't allow the CIA to shoot 
planes over its territory. It was a Peruvian who fired despite directions 
of Americans in the surveillance plane. Defending its Air Force, Peru said 
no flight plan was filed.

Journalists shot down attempts at damage control while waving the filed 
flight plan. The suspected drug plane had large identifying numbers on its 
side, not to mention a dove of peace.

According to NBC's Andrea Mitchell, the Clinton administration in 1994 
thought this program too risky, our level of involvement too high. The 
Pentagon also was concerned.

Our State Department argued for the program. For plausible deniability, 
Peruvians, not Americans, would call the control tower to identify possible 
drug runners.

This time they didn't. Veronica and Charity Bowers died because their 
country gave up the control that could have saved them.

Years ago, Dad flew us in his little Tri-pacer from Ajo, Ariz. to Guaymas, 
Mexico, for a family snorkeling vacation. Most American-bound cocaine and 
heroin comes through Mexico. Flying private planes in a country that is a 
drug source shouldn't be a capital offense, either for Americans or 
citizens of another country.

Downing planes reduced the area's coca crop, defenders said. But it is 
demand that fuels our drug problem. Despite billions spent on interdiction, 
sufficient cocaine and heroin get through that its street price is lower 
than 30 years ago. Had it risen, desperate addicts would deal enough to 
fellow addicts or steal enough from the rest of us to feed their habit.

We need to seriously consider the damaged caused by our high-control, 
low-support drug policies. Civil liberties have been trampled at home and 
abroad.

The drug war has helped put up to a third of young black males in the 
criminal justice system. Let's face it, we would never accept criminalizing 
that percentage of young white males.

We don't have to. Caucasians guilty of the same offenses aren't subjected 
to racial profiling. Their families are more likely to have the resources 
for a better defense than a court-appointed attorney, and they often 
receive better plea bargains and lower penalties from a largely white 
criminal justice system.

Since up to half of adults have used illegal drugs, if we were really 
industrious, half of us could work to pay the costs of jailing the other 
half. Already the drug war has given us the world's highest incarceration 
rate, and court-ordered reductions of overcrowded prisons have put violent 
offenders back on the streets, making room for new drug offenders.

Instead of funding civil liberties violations we would never allow at home, 
Congress should adequately fund drug treatment. Europeans increasingly 
treat drugs as a health problem. Americans tend to consider 
decriminalization "soft on drugs" and reject high-support programs as 
socialist, but it's America that consumes half the world's cocaine.

Bush proposes cuts in child abuse prevention to fund tax cuts for the 
wealthy. Instead let's fund effective programs so that fewer abused kids 
self-medicate on drugs or try to escape the abuse through dealing.

Let's fund reading classes for poor readers so they can actually understand 
their textbooks. Drug dealing is an attractive career choice to few other 
than addicts or the desperately unskilled.

Targeting root causes like child abuse and functional illiteracy would 
fight drugs more effectively than a war on our own citizens. Instead of 
seeking deniability for our programs and being in denial about demand, we 
should take responsibility for both.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom