The Journal

Issue date: 8/30/07 Section: Opinion/Editorial

Legalizing all drugs is the only way to crush drug cartels. It would also prevent and treat addiction and curb peripheral drug crime.

The War on Drugs has caused more problems than it has solved since its inception. It costs taxpayers $69 billion a year to run the Drug Enforcement Agency, prosecute and jail offenders. Drug users are imprisoned rather than treated for addiction. Courts have whittled away the Fourth Amendment-a guarantee against illegal search and seizure-in an effort to combat drugs. This restricts every American's rights, regardless of whether or not you obey the law.

United States drug policies punish the drug user and the taxpayer alike, creating a bureaucracy guaranteeing that drug cartels, which fund terrorism and dictatorships are protected from meaningful consequences.

American political culture has developed the theory that our massive prison system and extremely punitive sentencing are the only way that crime can be combated. Any group or politician disagreeing with the "gospel truth" of our current drug policy is mocked and immediately labeled as "soft on drugs" and "soft on crime."

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a national organization with over 12,000 active and retired law enforcement members, reports that 85 percent of the local, state and national politicians they interviewed agreed that a prohibition on drugs wastes time, money and fails to address the real issue behind drugs-addiction.

Drug offenders have been the fastest growing segment of the prison population since the mid-'80s, according to criminologist Elliot Currie of the University of California, Irvine. Drug use is most prominent in people ages 18-24 when people should be entering the workforce or going to college. Nearly 25 percent of the nation's prison population are drug offenders, most of them users, not dealers, Currie said.

This means our system is failing to catch dealers in most cases. Those dealers caught are generally found with small amounts; they are making money to support their own habits. This creates a felon class that makes it back to the street, still addicted.

Drugs are mostly smuggled through the borders into the United States, where large supplies are disseminated into smaller networks. We do not have the ability to prosecute in other countries, and heads of drug cartels have strangleholds on even the most honest foreign governments.

Continued...

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