The War on Drugs is a complete waste of time and money.

Or not.

Governmental effort should be concentrated to correct flaws in the War on Drugs and eventually minimize black market trade.

Or not.

McDaniel college students listened to both arguments during a nearly two-hour debate, Wednesday night, between Maryland House Minority Whip, Del. Tony O'Donnell, and Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, a Silver Spring-based policy group. The town hall-style debate, titled "The Drug War: Our Domestic Vietnam?" was spirited and passionate.

O'Donnell (R-Calvert/St. Mary's) argued in favor of maintaining the vigor of the War on Drugs - while acknowledging some flaws. Sterling argued in favor of legalizing, regulating and controlling the supply of drugs through governmental intervention.

"In Maryland the law is called the Controlled Dangerous Substances Act," Sterling said. "At the federal level it's the Controlled Substances Act. They're oxymorons. Try to think of an area in our economy that is more out of control. I stand here as an advocate of control."

They disagreed on most points.

Sterling called it the longest war in U.S. history. O'Donnell said that distinction belonged to the Cold War.

Sterling compared it to Vietnam, after saying the government has lied to the American public, the Congress and the death toll has taken a particular claim on African Americans.

O'Donnell compared it to both the Civil War and the Cold War. He said leaders in government need to "stay the course" just as President Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War and numerous presidents did during the Cold War.

Sterling said the number of arrests for drug offenses in the United States annually is more than double the arrests for any other violent crime, according to FBI statistics.

O'Donnell countered that those arrests are a matter of consequence for breaking the law.

"Should we take away those consequences?" O'Donnell asked. "If we go down that road we go to a lawless society."

Sterling cited increasing crime statistics since the War on Drugs began in the 1970s. O'Donnell said those statistics were more complicated than the War on Drugs, but caused by numerous societal problems, from joblessness to poverty, to "the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family."

They both argued the economics of the drug trade.

Sterling said that with governmental regulation of a legalized product, the crime associated with supplying drugs would drop.

O'Donnell argued that in order to reduce the amount of drugs, and drug related crimes, government needs to attack both demand domestically and supply sites in foreign nations.

And in the end, they agreed to disagree.

But McDaniel students listened to the debate, moderated by political science professor Herb Smith, and many came to conclusions somewhere in between O'Donnell and Sterling.

"I don't think that right now either one would work," said Katelin Moomau, a senior political science and international studies major. "Hopefully a compromise can be reached between the two." She said some drugs could be legalized but would need to be controlled.

"I mostly agreed with Del. O'Donnell because I feel that drugs should not be available to the public," freshman Matt Chilton said. But he also said Sterling raised some interesting points about crime increases during the War on Drugs.

Sophomore Alicia Feuillet, a political science and biology major had questioned Sterling about health risks drugs such as ecstasy would pose to society, if legalized, and said afterward that she still felt like drugs need to be controlled. But the debate was interesting.

"I thought it was a good exchange of ideas," Feuillet said.

Reach staff writer Jonathan D. Jones at 410-857-7865 or jonesj@lcniofmd.com.

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