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Time to make peace
by John A. Jackson
Some wars have to be fought out until no one can remember what they were supposed to achieve.
The war on drugs, for example.
That war's costs in money, in blood, in shattered lives, in the ruin of cities and the corruption of nations equal that of any other war we have fought. And the result? An end to addiction in this country? Domestic tranquillity? International peace and friendship?
More than half a million Americans are in prison now for drug-related crimes, most of them for simple possession.
As a people we are so hostile to the use of drugs like heroin and cocaine that we deny them even to terminal cancer patients whose agony can be eased in no other way. That is a powerful hostility, and while I deplore and oppose the human suffering, I cannot say that the hostility is morally wrong.
Drug addicts do not lose their souls, as Vice President Gore recently told a group of children. But they lose so much else that having souls may only make their situation worse.
I doubt you will find many persons as opposed to cocaine and heroin use as I am. I have seen people I love destroy themselves with drugs.
So why am I going to vote for Proposition 36 next month? Because it is time to begin to make peace. Because the drug abusers are our own people, our own blood, and we must save them, not compound their self-destruction. Because punishment cannot work and treatment can.
It has in Arizona. It will in New York. And it can in California.
Prop. 36 is far from perfect. In particular, it goes way too far, for my sense of policy, in specifying the details of how its reforms will be carried out. The drug court judges who oppose it as tying their hands, for example, are not wrong. (The prison guards' opposition is another matter.)
But I do not believe anyone expects Prop. 36 to be final. Indeed, its originators, as I understand, envision a time when drug abuse will be entirely decriminalized and treated as a medical and not a legal matter.
That is a road I would see us all travel as quickly as we can. We have tried the alternative for most of a century and it has come closer to destroying our own cities than to stopping the drug trade.
We have fought the drug war and the drugs won. But there is no reason to think they will win the peace.
I wish prospects in the Middle East were just so hopeful. But religion may be worse than opium.
John Jackson may be reached at TomShadwell@cs.com.