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There is a movement, gathered here in Atlanta, Georgia, that argues that the means to fight the drug problem cannot be discussed. This movement is based on a false fundamentalism: society's fight against drugs can be carried out either by means of prohibition (namely the status quo) or it must surrender to what it calls "legalization." The arguments of those who advocate "legalization" are too dangerous even to be heard. Thus the Atlanta Resolution's first point is to "reject all proposals to legalize illicit drugs." This is simplistic thinking at its worst. Ninety-five percent of The Atlanta Resolution is plain common sense, but that is not what the Atlanta conference has gathered to discuss.

The conference agenda describes the catastrophe that would result from legalization, but no person who advocates any version of "legalization" has been invited to present their view or to answer questions. The conference characterizations of drug "legalization" are as fair and as realistic as using "Star Wars" movies to describe the outcome of the NASA manned space flight program. Implicit in the conference agenda is that our current strategy is simply dandy.

But the American people don't think our current strategy is dandy at all. A nationwide survey in February 1995 by Peter Hart Research Associates for Drug Strategies, Inc. found that 50% of the American people gave the Federal government a grade of F or D for dealing with the problems of drug use and addiction, and 59% gave those grades for the problem of drug-related crime. Only 10% would give the Federal government a grade of A or B for dealing with drug use, and only 11% for drug-related crime. Only 6% of Americans thought that drug abuse was less of a problem today than 5 years ago.

A strategy must set forth goals and means. The 1995 National Drug Control Strategy (the Strategy) promulgated by President Clinton sets forth clear and worthwhile goals that are a distinct improvement from previous strategies (Table 1-1). The means proposed, however, are largely the same ones -- prohibition, and its enforcement -- which have failed.

The National Drug Control Strategy is, in a sense, schizophrenic -- it reads as though it were drafted by a committee of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It reflects an internal conflict between realistic goals and priorities, and the exaggeration characteristic of politicized discussions of the drug problem. The Strategy writes about various drug problems oblivious to the causes of the problems and reasonable methods to correct those problems.

Prohibition has failed to reduce crime or addiction. There is no prohibition-based strategy that will substantially address those problems. A "drug-free" society is unrealistic. Our strategy of punishing drug addicts is akin to expelling from school students with learning disabilities. To claim to be "taking the profits out" of $50 billion of a year's drug trafficking through the yearly forfeiture of $1 billion in property is absurd. Even sales taxes would be more effective in taking the profits out. Certainly much more extensive taxation is required but it is only possible when prohibition is repealed.

We must change our strategy, but we must do so cautiously. A regulatory, management approach to the myriad drug problems is called for. It should be tailored to specific issues and adopted incrementally. There will be addicts and crime no matter what we do. An example of regulatory complexity is the regulation of alcohol, one "legal" drug. There are probably 10,000 different alcohol laws reflecting multiple goals from revenue collection to reducing consumption. For this one drug, the regulation of the sale, advertising, taxation, and places of distribution and consumption vary in every jurisdiction depending whether it is beer, wine or whiskey. Alcohol regulation has evolved since 1933. In some ways it has improved, and in others it has gotten worse. Developing a comprehensive regulatory scheme for dozens of classes of drugs can't be accomplished overnight. There is much necessary market and regulatory research.

National Drug Control Strategy -- A Strategy Founded on Deceptions and Failures A strategy for action should identify the most important problems and recognize the limits of what the strategy can effect -- it must be honest. The first problem identified in the White House's National Drug Control Strategy -- February 1995: "The crime-drug cycle continues." Second, "More teenagers are smoking pot." The third problem is described as: "Less of them [America's teenagers] think cocaine use is dangerous."

What does the Strategy say about the "crime-drug cycle?" It simply sets forth the number and percentage of "drug-related murders" for the past eight years which ranged between 751 (3.9%) in 1986 and 1403 (7.4%) in 1989, down to 1287 (5.2%) in 1993, and states that there has been a marked increase youth homicide reported by Dr. Alfred Blumstein. The Strategy provides no analysis of the problem. It fails to explain the crime-drug cycle and how to break it.

Mostly, the crime-drug cycle exists because drugs are prohibited. Prohibition inevitably requires violence. All businesses are subject to conflict among market-participants. Such conflict is resolved nonviolently for legal businesses by means of the courts or other nonviolent dispute resolution programs. Prohibited businesses are forced to resolve conflict illegally -- either through violence or through adjudication by organized crime figures who rely upon violence for enforcement.

Prohibition markets are especially attractive robbery targets because of the inevitably high volumes of cash and over-priced contraband. Unlike legitimate businesses that can take checks or credit cards, illegal drug markets take only cash. Legitimate business can hire licensed security guards. Prohibition businesses only hire for protection those who demonstrate they are prepared to kill. "Legalizers" share the nation's goal of ending the crime-drug cycle.

Second, certainly teenage marijuana use is a problem. But more teenagers start a lifetime of addiction to cigarettes every year than use marijuana one time, and the smoking prevalence is increasing. More teenagers got drunk in the past two weeks than used marijuana once in the past year, and the alcohol consumption prevalence is up. The Strategy presents strong evidence that teenage use of "liquor" is a more serious problem in violence and suicide than teenage marijuana use. Teen drunkenness is also a major factor in teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, school failure, and crime. Dr. Lloyd Johnston pointed out over a decade ago that teen tobacco use is one of the best predictors of teen hard drug use, but aside from a couple of paragraphs in the 150-page Strategy, alcohol and tobacco are ignored.

Teen smoking and drunkenness are not political hot-buttons. There is no multi-billion Federal, State and local tax-funded establishment to address those problems. The sponsors of the Partnership for a Drug Free America earn millions of dollars annually from the promotion of tobacco and alcohol. And the tobacco and alcohol industries are among the biggest of corporate contributors to political campaign committees of both political parties. They fight every effort to increase the taxes on alcohol and tobacco and to limit the advertising of these drugs. Public health and safety is not on their agenda. Our political leadership is craven in failing to challenge these industries. Most "legalizers" share the nation's goal of reducing teenage drug, alcohol and tobacco use.

Typically, the Strategy is given to exaggeration. Saying fewer teenagers think cocaine is dangerous, the Strategy implies that children are largely misled about the dangers of drugs. In fact, 89.3% of last year's high school seniors believed that they would be at "great risk" if they took cocaine regularly. Or the Strategy says "Drug using adults from every social strata are clogging court dockets, crowding emergency rooms ..." Clogged court dockets, a top national emergency ... or some trial lawyers' nightmare? The serious problems are often nowhere near as widespread as implied by the Strategy. In 1991, there were 93.5 million emergency room visits according to the 1993 Statistical Abstract, and less than 500,000 of them were drug-related, hardly "crowding emergency rooms." Emergency room "episodes" involving drugs have tripled since 1985 -- when the "war on drugs" was kicked into high gear under President Reagan. This data is actually more evidence that our prohibition-based strategy is failing to protect the public.

Outside the realm of exaggeration, hype and political posturing, in the real world of 1995, the three most pressing problems from drugs in America are the violence in the drug trade, the spread of AIDS, and the immense and growing power of the criminal underworld. This has been the case for at least a decade:

Drug trade violence was identified as the cause of 40% of the homicides in New York City in the late-1980s. More importantly, the drug trade is responsible for the proliferation of guns among American youth. Since 1985 the white juvenile homicide rate grew by 80%, and the black juvenile homicide rate more than doubled, growing 120%. According to Dr. Alfred Blumstein, this is directly linked to the prohibition-created crack cocaine trade.

In 1993, AIDS became the biggest killer of Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. In 1992, there were 24,000 new AIDS cases where the infection involved the injection of drugs. By 1992, roughly 40% of all new AIDS cases involved injection of drugs. On average, each AIDS case costs the taxpayers $100,000. Unless checked, "dirty needle"-related AIDS will soon cost $24 billion per year.

Large, international criminal organizations -- funded with drug profits -- are steadily growing more powerful. They are subverting democratic governments on every continent around the world. In the 1990 election, the drug cartels assassinated four candidates for President in Colombia. Last year, the leading candidate for President of Mexico was assassinated in a crime linked to political protection of the drug traffickers. These criminal organizations have acquired enormous economic power rivaling that of the largest corporations on the Fortune 500. Only one drug trafficking cartel, based in Medellin, Colombia, has been put of out business, but dozens of others around the world are growing, and increasingly collaborating. The Strategy claims success because the number of casual users of cocaine has gone down. However, the consumption of cocaine in the U.S. has actually remained stable since 1985. The profits from supplying that cocaine (as well as heroin and marijuana) is the greatest transfer of wealth to criminals in the history of the world. Americans have been given a Strategy that denies the reality of prohibition economics, that ignores the law of supply and demand, and that is blind to the relation between cause and effect. What is needed is a more effective national drug strategy that is no longer bound by the counterproductive paradigm of prohibition.

This paper outlines a strategy to fight violence and reduce AIDS that could be more effective. It is based not on polls, but on what is humane and realistic. It is based on what can be accomplished, not on political slogans such as attaining a "drug-free America."

1. Remember that drug laws and drug policy should help people, not hurt them

People who have drug problems should not be "demonized," they need help. People with drug problems are usually in some kind of physical or psychological pain. Addicts should not be treated like lepers in the Old Testament who were stoned by their neighbors or banished. People who don't have drug problems, and who aren't hurting anyone, should be left alone.

Everyone who wants to quit using drugs should be able to get appropriate treatment. Addicted single parents need residential treatment that won't break up families. Pregnant addicts need treatment, not imprisonment -- but most treatment programs won't accept pregnant addicts. HIV positive addicts should be the top priority for treatment, yet many programs won't take HIV positive people. All drug addicted prisoners should get treatment, but no one should be prosecuted or imprisoned simply to get treatment.

Relief of physical pain is one of the oldest medical traditions and a basic human value. Our policy should be compassionate toward those who are in pain from disease or from its treatment. Marijuana has well documented medical uses. Even the Chief Administrative Law Judge at the Drug Enforcement Administration, Francis L. Young, after hearing evidence gathered from around the nation over a four-month period, agreed that marijuana has medical uses. Those Americans who can benefit from using marijuana medically should get it legally from their doctors. This is a perfectly respectable position, and it was endorsed by the National Association of Attorneys General on June 25, 1983.

Heroin relieves pain for some people who obtain no relief from other drugs -- those people should get heroin legally. In the late 1980s, without weakening the severe penalties for the unauthorized use of heroin, the conservative Canadian government joined the United Kingdom in "legalizing" heroin for medical use only.

The medical uses of marijuana and heroin do not mean these drugs are "good." Nor does it mean these drugs are "better" than other drugs. Simply, these drugs are useful for some people. The people who can benefit from these drugs should not be denied them.

Some persons, justifiably concerned about the abuse of these drugs by drug addicts and by children, oppose even the very carefully controlled medical use of these drugs because medical use of marijuana or medical use of heroin supposedly sends the "wrong message." First, drug abusers aren't listening for this message. Cocaine, Valium®, Dilaudid®, and most controlled substances have uses in medicine, but many addicts who abuse those drugs don't care, even if they are actually aware of such uses. Drug abusers don't rationalize their drug use as "medical."

Secondly, there isn't a single positive value we want our children to learn that is not being undermined by a host of "wrong messages". For every virtue -- honesty, thrift, industry, studiousness, cleanliness, chastity, charity, responsibility, civic-mindedness, moderation, non-violence, or sobriety and abstinence from drugs -- movies, television, advertising and popular music are sending messages that directly conflict with positive values. Every teenager everyday has to deal with, and we hope disregard, seductive messages that conflict with virtue.

Exaggerating the dangers to children of the "wrong message" when it comes to subtleties of medical practice is unwarranted and irrational. It is the job of drug abuse prevention programs to teach children the important differences between drugs prescribed by doctors and street drugs. People who are dying or going blind should not be forced to endure more suffering because drug abuse prevention programs might sometimes be ineffective in helping children draw the necessary distinctions between the legitimate and the inappropriate uses of drugs.

The Controlled Substances Act makes cocaine, THC, methadone and other synthetic opiates perfectly legal -- when their use is prescribed for by a physician in the proper circumstances. Debating how systems of control can be improved does not "undermine" the drug abuse prevention effort. To say that the American public should not openly debate other forms of "drug legalization" because children might get the wrong message, is like saying the public should not debate gun control, militia groups or the Second Amendment because children might get the wrong message. It is fundamental to the health of democratic governments that public policies be debated.

2. Adopt a public health approach toward all drugs and drug users

This requires a comprehensive approach toward all drugs, not simply now illegal drugs. What we should be concerned about is the drug "abuse" problem -- not just the "illegal" drug problem. "Illegal" drug use does not exist in legal or social isolation. Treatment professionals recognize cross-addiction and polydrug abuse. Prevention professionals recognize a "gateway" relationship between legal drugs and use of illegal drugs. Tighten the regulations surrounding alcohol and tobacco -- for adults and for children -- and this will help reduce the use and abuse of other drugs as well. In order to delay the onset of teen alcohol and tobacco use, which delays the onset of other drug use, we must reduce the promotion and availability of tobacco and alcohol to children.

To respond to our drug problem we must expand honest anti-drug education. Honest comprehensive prevention programs work. Cigarettes kill more than 400,000 Americans in a year and are as addictive as heroin or cocaine, according to the U.S. Surgeon General. Yet forty-four million addicted cigarette smokers have quit in the past thirty years. This is the result of a tremendous, successful public health campaign. This campaign succeeded without jailing or urine-testing cigarette smokers, without prosecuting tobacco sellers, without prohibition, and in spite of the annual expenditure of billions of dollars to promote tobacco-use. Most policy makers reject the idea of prohibiting cigarettes because it would be a disaster of corruption and crime, and wholly inconsistent with American values.

Cigarettes, alcohol, or marijuana can be "gateways" toward use of harder drugs. Therefore prevention programs need to focus on all drugs.

We must continue to evaluate drug abuse prevention programs. Mathea Falco in The Making of a Drug-Free America (1992) pointed out that most programs have not been evaluated. Research Triangle Institute reviewed 18 studies in September 1994 and found D.A.R.E.®, America's most common drug abuse prevention program, was substantially less effective in reducing drug use among the children who took the program than certain other approaches. If we are serious about prevention, we must be willing to abandon programs that don't work well, even if they are politically popular.

Quality medical care and drug abuse treatment must be easily available for those who need it. Heroin addicts, crack addicts, the mentally ill, the homeless, the uninsured, and everyone at risk of catching or spreading contagious disease are the highest treatment priority. This will help halt the transmission of disease, and reduce the use of illegal drugs as pain killers for untreated disease.

To stop the spread of blood borne disease among injecting drug addicts, clean needles should be exchanged for used ones. This is the recommendation of the National Commission on HIV and AIDS, and top government scientists who have studied the issue. Distribution of hypodermic syringes is a crime in eleven states which should be repealed. Until 1965 (Griswold v. Connecticut), distribution of condoms to any person was a crime in some states. Thirty-years ago sale of condoms in supermarkets and convenience stores was unthinkable. Now, for the widely accepted public health purpose of fighting sexually transmitted disease, condoms are widely distributed to the sexually active as one component of a public health program. When we think about drugs and disease in less judgmental terms, public health distribution of hypodermic syringes to drug injectors will no longer be shocking.

Under appropriate controls and supervision, drugs must be made available to addicts to reduce harms. Smoking tobacco is the most dangerous means for ingesting nicotine. If Nicorette® gum were cheaper and more freely available many more smokers and snuff dippers would be likely to quit. Cigarettes, after all, are only crude, disposable nicotine ingestion devices -- of the most dangerous kind. Nicotine is addicting but is not as dangerous as the tars, particulates and gases in cigarette smoke. Heroin is addicting but is not as dangerous as HIV, hepatitis, and the adulterants added by criminals who distribute street drugs.

Heroin addicts who can't or won't quit should not be banished to the underworld, nor put at risk of death from criminally contaminated drug supplies. They ought to be able to get clean, affordable opiates under medical and pharmaceutical supervision if it will prevent them from spreading disease or committing crimes. Incidentally, Dr. Alfred Blumstein, former president of the American Society of Criminology, whose work on the "crime-drug cycle" is cited in the Strategy, endorses this approach to certifiable addicts. (Of course, the use of heroin by addicts must not violate the principle of user accountability discussed below.)

In considering why some people use and abuse drugs, we must address the causes and contributing factors. One major cause is family violence and sexual abuse. Another co-factor with drug abuse is teenage pregnancy. Public health and family-strengthening programs to address those problems are key parts of an anti-drug strategy. To further prevent addiction and overdoses, patients and doctors need to know more about prescription drugs and their risks and interactions.

3. Insist Upon Drug and Alcohol User Accountability and Responsibility

People who hurt or endanger others must be held responsible for their actions. Drug or alcohol use is not an excuse for criminal or negligent conduct.

Protection of public safety (e.g. safety on the streets, of travelers, medical patients, etc.): In critical safety situations we should require performance tests to detect actual impairment by drugs (legal and illegal), alcohol, exhaustion, etc. Following any kind of accident, it is perfectly appropriate to immediately test the blood of pilots, engineers, drivers, surgeons, etc. for evidence of use of alcohol and drugs -- legal and illegal. This would be appropriate not only for airplane, rail, maritime or motor vehicle accidents, but also for medical accidents such as administering medications improperly or making mistakes in surgery. Past use of intoxicants identified by urine or hair tests is irrelevant to public safety and drug user accountability.

We must encourage increased professional responsibility and peer supervision of professions like medicine, airline piloting, etc. to police against on-the-job recklessness such as alcohol or drug use. Suspected misconduct that threatens public safety must be investigated and prosecuted where criminal recklessness has occurred.

Criminal conduct: Drug or alcohol use is not an excuse for criminal conduct such as robbery, theft, forgery, etc. All drug addicted offenders and prisoners should get treatment. But in the absence of actual harm or substantial risk of endangering others, Americans should not be prosecuted or imprisoned as a means to get treatment.

Convicted predatory criminals such as robbers, rapists, assaulters, and burglars should be drug and alcohol-abstinent while on probation and parole. This requires frequent and extensive surprise drug and alcohol testing, and a system of consistent sanctions for violations.

Drug and alcohol user licenses: Drug and alcohol use are privileges, and should be subject to licenses which can be revoked for misuse. Some states adopted alcohol use licenses after national prohibition was repealed. Persons who use drugs or alcohol might be required to get special liability insurance coverage. It should not be presumed that persons over 21 are responsible alcohol or drug users.

4. Insist upon vendor accountability and responsibility

Just like users, vendors of drugs and alcohol need to be held responsible for their actions.

Violence, corruption, product adulteration, tax evasion, and antitrust violations by drug, alcohol and tobacco sellers are crimes and should be investigated and punished. Adulteration and mislabeling of drugs and alcohol should also be subject to product liability civil law remedies. Vendors must comply with reasonable regulations and inspections, pay taxes, and resolve marketplace conflicts through the law, not violence. These provisions are much more easily investigated and enforced in a regulated environment than under prohibition.

Convicted criminals can't be licensed to legally sell alcohol now -- they shouldn't be allowed to sell other drugs after the repeal of prohibition.

The prohibition against sales to minors of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs must be enforced.

Sales to those who have been denied or deprived of their privilege to use alcohol or drugs should be prohibited. Like alcohol dram-shop laws, over-the-counter sales of drugs to those who are already intoxicated should not be permitted.

Promotion of alcohol, tobacco and drug use should be severely limited. Advertising that either targets kids or is placed in media in which kids have legitimate interest in (e.g. professional and amateur athletics, popular music, motion pictures, etc.) should be disallowed.

5. Maximize the reach of law and respect for the law

Drug and alcohol buyers should be discouraged from patronizing criminals. For example, growing one's own marijuana is today a felony, and growers risk the forfeiture of their homes or land. Every marijuana user today (between 9 and 20 million persons) either becomes a felon or has to patronize criminals. Shouldn't home cultivation for personal use be encouraged, even under prohibition? We should be reducing the commercial opportunities of criminals, not expanding them. Even under prohibition, decriminalizing home marijuana cultivation would sharply reduce the tens of billions of dollars in annual profits now funding organized crime.

Almost no police officers or revenue agents are killed or injured enforcing the liquor laws. Marijuana, the most widely consumed illegal drug, should be taxed and sold to adults with warning messages -- but with prohibition of the promotion we suffer from with tobacco and alcohol. Very few law enforcement officers will be killed or injured enforcing a managed, regulated drug trade.

6. Set appropriate priorities and achievable social goals

Remember that there are no magic solutions to the problems of crime, violence and drug abuse. The principal immediate goal should be to reduce the harms from drug and alcohol use and commerce to a minimum. We must realistically acknowledge that we are not aiming for the elimination of these problems, but a dramatic reduction in their severity.

Reduce the spread of HIV and AIDS, hepatitis and other diseases. Make clean needle/used needle exchange programs available to all populations of injecting drug users. Use such programs to introduce injecting drug users to health care, drug abuse treatment, and safer sex practices. Public health workers with clean needles need to go into shooting galleries. Glass crack pipes that break and cut the lips are spreading HIV as well. They need to be replaced in crack houses. Condoms need to be distributed in crack houses and to prostitutes who are working the streets and crack houses. Treatment for STDs that cause sores such as syphilis, herpes and gonorrhea needs to be made available to further reduce the risk of HIV transmission. Perhaps prostitutes should be licensed and subject to daily and weekly examinations by public health doctors.

Refocus Domestic Law Enforcement. All crimes of violence need to be investigated and prosecuted. Prosecute crime by traffickers and users, with the highest priority being violent crime (including domestic violence) and burglary. "Street crime" is generally the responsibility of state and local law enforcement agencies. Special squads need to be established and given plentiful resources to investigate crimes of violence such as street robbery, car jacking, and house invasion with the same intensity of focus that is now given to homicide or rape. We can afford such anti-violence measures when we stop spending so disproportionately to support the prohibition strategy.

Crime Prevention: Community-oriented policing is an effective way to make streets safer and prevent crime by involving the community in the policing effort. An example is when a local patrol officer gives to neighbors his or her beeper number to call when a crime is being committed, not simply an anonymous 911 operator. Police should encourage community groups to expand neighborhood watch and citizen patrol efforts.

James Q. Wilson in "Broken Windows" pointed out how the rules of the street can affect the crime rate. For example, drunks can sit on a stoop, but to prevent the climate of disorder that exists when drunks sprawl on the sidewalk, the police enforce an informal rule that drunks cannot lie down. In a similar manner, state and local law enforcement and prosecutors should concentrate on directing drug trafficking indoors, off the street and out of residential neighborhoods, commercial districts during business hours, playgrounds, parks and schools. Drug-free school zones can be accomplished by sustained enforcement in and around the schools and by heightened sentencing for sales that take place at schools as a matter of prosecutorial policy. However, mandatory minimum sentences are ineffective and unjust. Enforcement operations that lure traffickers to school-zones to create longer sentences have been properly characterized by judges as "sentencing entrapment" and are unjust and dishonest.

Corrections: Corrections policy needs to be reformed. Repeat, serious violent offenders need to be incarcerated. Record keeping must be accurate to assure that repeat offenders are identified and not released by mistake. Records and fingerprint files need to be fully automated. Prisons should not be used for simple drug possessors and users, or for non-violent drug offenders. Unfortunately, over 20% of the Federal prison population is now non-violent, first-time drug offenders. These offenders should have their sentences commuted to community supervision.

Market-place violence: When drug buyers don't pay the sellers promptly and in full for the drugs they purchase, there is no legal recourse. When drug sellers sell drugs of less than represented purity, there is no legal recourse. When one drug seller leaves his employer to go into business for himself, taking the boss's customers with him, there is no legal recourse. Today these examples of normal commercial problems result in violence because of the prohibition strategy. Drug market-related violence will be ended only by legal regulation.

Drug user violence: Drug use cannot be an excuse for acts of violence (see the user accountability principle above). Those who commit acts of violence forfeit the privilege of using drugs legally. Those who commit crimes under the influence of drugs or to buy drugs must be placed in drug treatment in connection with the appropriate punishment.

Some drug user violence is committed in the course of obtaining money to buy drugs. Drug addicts often have a great need for money because they have developed a tolerance and because the drugs are expensive as a result of prohibition. (Indeed, before the wholesale failure of our drug strategy in the 1980s DEA measured its success by the increased price of illegal drugs.) Some of this crime will be eliminated when addicts have a legal source of drugs. (Of course many robbers who use drugs are simply robbers and must be targeted and treated as robbers).

Except for alcohol and PCP very little drug user violence is a result of the mental effects from the ingestion of the drugs.

A great many drug users are not committing robbery, burglary or other crimes. Some want drug treatment, but many drug users do not. As we have witnessed in public health campaigns addressing tobacco, alcohol, and physical fitness, well-designed education and social controls are very effective over time in changing the self-destructive behaviors of many persons.

Anti-crime efforts generally: Leaving behind the prohibition-based stereotypes of young men as dope dealers and bad guys will improve police-community relations in a critical segment of the population. Replacement of open-air drug markets with carefully-regulated clinics and other access systems will help make streets safer and allow residents to feel safe walking in their communities, leading to more retail businesses that provide more jobs. Capital will not go to drug dealers, but will stay in the community.

Strengthen International Law Enforcement. The U.S. Justice and Treasury Departments should concentrate on the highest-level and international traffickers, arms dealers and money launderers whose violence and corruption is undermining governments and the global financial system. These are complex cases requiring the reassignment of law enforcement agents and prosecutors away from minor level offenders. Right now, the majority of the productivity of U.S. law enforcement is the imprisonment of street-level dealers, bodyguards, mules and couriers (55.2%), and only a very small fraction are high-level dealers (11.2%) or international scope traffickers (23.7%).

The current prohibition strategy has boosted revenues of organized crime all over the world, increasing their ability to buy weapons, bribe government officials, take over news media outlets, and corrupt legitimate business. The criminals will profit from the opportunities created by the prohibition-based Strategy much faster than the Strategy will bring them to justice or confiscate their revenues.

Raise revenue from important economic sectors; reduce the financial power of criminals and drug, alcohol and tobacco organizations. Another goal is to obtain revenue from the commerce in drugs and alcohol to cover the social costs as much as possible. Federal alcohol taxation now raises some $11 billion per year. Alcohol and tobacco taxes should be substantially higher, but at rates that do not substantially increase the problem of cigarette bootlegging. Excise taxes, occupational taxes, and user fees on marijuana alone could raise $10-20 billion yearly for state and Federal governments. Such taxes should initially be set at low levels to draw buyers from the criminal markets, which will help eliminate such markets, but enforcement will certainly be required. After the black market infrastructure has decayed, taxes should be steadily raised to discourage use.

Expand prevention programs and efforts targeted at youth. Experimentation with drugs, alcohol, tobacco and inhalants has increased in recent years. Families, communities and schools need to identify and concentrate prevention efforts on the kids who are at high risk for becoming seriously involved in drug use. What is needed is not simply an "anti-drug" program, but a comprehensive effort that: (1) provides counseling around the problems from which drugs are often an escape; (2) provides stimulating curricula in schools; (3) provides peer group activities that are constructive and safe; (4) provides opportunities for athletics, recreation, and socializing across the wide variety of interests that kids have; (5) effectively intervenes in cases of domestic violence; (6) effectively promotes and supports teen pregnancy prevention; and (7) promotes non-violent dispute resolution.

Offer economic alternatives and build effective schools. The opportunities of drug trafficking offer enormously tempting routes to reach the American dream of prosperity. Ending prohibition will close off much of the huge underground economy. Training in the legitimate tools of entrepreneurship must be offered to our children, and economic opportunities need to be created to provide real alternatives to crime for the young. In addition to an education that prepares our youth for the workplace of the 21st century, youth must learn that for them opportunity truly exists.

Ending drug prohibition is the key to sharply reducing the violence and crime that make business investment in inner cities such an infrequent reality. The elimination of prohibition-related crime will draw manufacturing, research and development, retail, and housing into communities with readily available labor that are already equipped with the infrastructure of rental buildings, public utilities, and transportation.

7. Be honest and self-critical

In September 1994, the Research Triangle Institute (a highly-respected research institution hired by the National Institute of Justice to study high school drug abuse prevention programs) reported that D.A.R.E.® -- the largest drug abuse prevention program in the country -- was ineffective in reducing drug use among teenagers. The Justice Department chose not to publish the study, and D.A.R.E.® America attempted to intimidate the American Journal of Public Health when its editors decided to publish these important conclusions. If policymakers were really concerned that a large percentage of teenagers were truly becoming much less fearful of cocaine use, they would to take action to protect children from the inadequacies of drug prevention programs that receive over $400 million in Federal funds annually.

8. Respect other peoples, other nations and other cultures

It is pathetic for America to blame other countries for our drug problems. Government corruption is a global epidemic that is spread by drug prohibition, and tragically such corruption exists in many places in the United States. America's failed domestic drug policies aggravate the corruption problems in many other societies.

Careful economic research has shown that there is no crop eradication strategy and no military operation overseas that can substantially reduce the availability of drugs in the U.S. The notion that "it is more efficient or more economical to stop drugs at the source" has been conclusively shown to be false. To deploy military or paramilitary forces against peasants who grow coca or opium not only wastes money, it politically strengthens anti-Western, anti-government political insurgencies. To incarcerate "mules" who are at the bottom of the distribution organizations is a waste of very expensive prison space.

Indians in Peru and Bolivia chew coca leaf, and professionals drink coca tea -- these are harmless practices. Those practices are the business of those societies, not ours. It is silly that coca users in Peru and Bolivia are international outlaws in violation of the Single Convention on Narcotics. Under regulation and genuine control, coca growing will be less profitable than it is now.

U.S. anti-narcotics policy now includes a variety of economic development schemes for the Andes. Andean economic development must be sustainable; it will never succeed dependent on gimmicks, subsidies, or price supports. As long as prohibition remains in place, legitimate economic development can never be an effective anti-narcotics strategy because the legitimate economy can never be more profitable than prohibition-induced drug trafficking or cultivation.

In our own country, peyote (which contains the entheogenic alkaloid mescaline) is the sacrament of the Native American Church. The use of peyote by members of the church has been protected under Federal law (but not state law) since 1965. There is no evidence of a peyote abuse problem, but Indians and non-Indians are prosecuted for their possession of peyote. With the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act Amendments of 1994, Native Americans will no longer be subject to criminal prosecution and religious persecution by various states for possession or use of peyote for "bona fide traditional ceremonial purposes in connection with the practice of a traditional Indian religion." Spiritual peyote use is no more "drug" use than sacramental wine consumed at Communion is drug use, and thus religious peyote use must be protected. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that all people are free to be religious seekers. Peyote use by non-Indians is not a social or public health problem. All Americans should be free to use peyote in a religious manner, without regard to their race or parentage.

9. Recognize that drugs are a major commodity in international trade

Drugs have been a part of international trade since coffee, tea and spices were introduced to Europe centuries ago. This trade has never been stopped by banning it, and it can't be. Take control of this enormous trade away from criminals and corrupt customs officials by regulating it and taxing it.

What the world community needs from the U.S. is a substantially intensified fight against the enormous power of prohibition-based drug trafficking cartels. The legitimate elements in Colombia and Mexico, for example, are continually being subverted by prohibition-financed corruption. The U.S. should deploy its largely incorrupt Justice and Treasury Departments against the highest level drug traffickers, and after prohibition is ended, continue the fight against other criminal subversion of legitimate governments and the global economy.

Simultaneously, the U.S. should renounce increasing cigarette exports as a principal objective of U.S. trade policy. It is not criminal, simply despicable, to push an addictive and dangerous drug on others. Americans, pushing tobacco in Asia, are as contemptible as the British when they forced China to accept Indian opium in the 19th century.

10. Be creative and flexible to meet our goals

Through regulation, encourage means of drug administration that are less harmful and easier to control -- physically, socially, culturally, and legally. Be restrictive of more harmful means, or means that are harder to control. For example, try to limit smoking of drugs -- nicotine, cocaine, heroin, marijuana -- which gives intense "rushes" but which is much more harmful and harder to control than other forms of ingestion. Smoking can be discouraged. Oral ingestion is less intense, less habit-forming, and less harmful, and perhaps can be encouraged as an alternative when appropriate.

11. Turn down the volume on drug messages

Drugs should neither be promoted, nor hysterically attacked. Prevent drug advertising from being aimed at youth, for example, via "Spuds MacKenzie" (the dog promoting Budweiser) or Camel cigarette's "Joe Camel/Smooth Character," or in youth-oriented media.

Keep anti-drug messages in front of children but keep them reasonable and truthful. The "This is your brain, This is your brain on drugs, Any questions?" TV spot featuring a skillet and frying eggs is an example of a ludicrous anti-drug message. Its dishonesty and exaggeration invited contempt. Some young people asked friends to get stoned by saying, "Want to fry an egg?" To bombard children with the message that "the most important thing in world is that you shouldn't do drugs" inevitably is an enticement.

TV PSAs that show realistic scenarios affirming kids who decline drugs offered by friends are important. Anti-drug messages should be interspersed with appropriate messages regarding safer-sex and pregnancy prevention practices, staying in school, non-violence, etc. TV PSAs should be part of community-wide, integrated anti-drug programs such as Project STAR, developed with NIDA assistance.

Conclusion

Whatever we do about drugs, sadly there will continue to be drug use and drug abuse. By thinking about drug use as a moral crusade, and maintaining prohibition and "zero tolerance," we exempt the drug trade from any regulation and control. Prohibition maximizes the violence and disease associated with drugs. Prohibition keeps drugs inordinately profitable and continuously tempts people -- all over the world -- to sell them for easy money. This proposed anti-prohibition strategy is not for "legalizing" drugs for "legalization's" sake -- ending prohibition is simply the recognition that legal markets are more easily controlled, regulated, and effectively policed, more humane toward those who are ensnared in the miseries of drugs, and ultimately cost-effective.

Those who propose that the fight against drug abuse can only take place if there is an enforced consensus and no debate or discussion of the issues are ignorant of history. The existence of facts is not determined by a vote. Those who believe that only prohibition can reduce drug use ignore the 44 million Americans who have quit smoking cigarettes.

Those who favor prohibition who refuse to talk with those who criticize prohibition demonstrate to the world that they lack confidence in their position. If those who promote the current strategy were confident that it was effective, they would welcome debate, not fear the criticism implicit in the advocacy of legalization.

James Burke, the Chairman of the Partnership for a Drug Free America, is concerned that allowing discussion of legalization "demotivates" the anti-drug warriors. That is probably true, but that is not the fault of the legalizers, it is the fault of the drug war strategy, for the Strategy is failing and the few successes are insignificant. If those in the trenches fighting the drug war believed they were successful, they would not be "demotivated" by anything said by the relative handful of "legalizers." If they are demoralized probably it is because, in their hearts, they know they are not succeeding. If the chairmen of Ford, Chrysler or General Motors said that Toyota and BMW should not be allowed to advertise, or Saabs and Hondas should not be reviewed in Car and Driver because it demotivated their workers, it would appear they were afraid of the marketplace and we would consider them unfit to lead their corporations.

The American people give the Federal government failing grades in the fight against drugs and they know that our current strategy is not working. But they are tired of being afraid of being robbed or burgled or shot at, and seeing kids on drugs, and they want changes and positive results.

When Americans are asked if they favor "legalization," they dissent strongly. What models of "legalization" have they had the opportunity to consider? They don't want crack sold in the Safeway or heroin sold like popcorn. For good reason they don't want drugs (and alcohol and tobacco) sold to their kids.

But is the only drug policy choice one between the current, failed approach of prohibition or the pure, unregulated free-market that actually exists almost nowhere in the American economy? Is the world of drug policy somehow uniquely only black or white? The reality is that there is a middle ground of regulation and control, consistent with traditional American values and capitalism, that offers us hope of helping more people, reducing crime and violence, preventing disease, and protecting individual privacy.

The Atlanta Resolution says that "legalization" is a simplistic solution, and thus should be rejected. In reality, "legalization" is much less simplistic than prohibition, "zero tolerance" or "just say no." To reject "all proposals," even the sophisticated ones, without reading them and critiquing them, is evidence of fear, not confidence in the correctness of the Strategy of prohibition.

To remotivate America to fight drugs requires an effective, sophisticated, non-prohibition strategy that is free of the hypocrisy, exaggeration, viciousness, divisiveness and partisanship that has characterized the "war on drugs."