Double standards rule in U.S. anti-drug policy

By Jonathan Power

LELAMABAD, Pakistan (JP): Over the Khyber Pass, only three or four hours' drive from here, is Afghanistan, heroin exporter to the world, which has recently been blacklisted ("decertified" in U.S. government jargon) by President Bill Clinton as a non- cooperative country in America's "drug war" and thus ineligible to receive American aid.

But on this side of the Khyber Pass, where the poppies appear to grow just as brightly and profusely, Pakistan -- although judged as deficient in the drug battle -- escaped penalty. White House "national security" considerations, as they continually have done on the issue of Pakistan's nuclear armory, overrode what many believe is a long overdue need to punish the government of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto.

In South America, it is the same story of inconsistency. Columbia is "decertified." Mexico, with its economic leverage is not. Yet, no country in the world has done as much as Colombia to defy the drug barons. Last year, it spent US$900 million -- ten times the foreign aid it received for the purpose -- on its anti- drug campaign.

In recent years, Columbia has lost its minister of justice, its attorney-general, the front-running presidential candidate and 100 passengers blown up on a domestic flight to drug mafia assassination squads. All these acts of the narco-terrorists were carried out in an attempt to rouse public pressure on the government to drop its all-out war against them.

Admittedly, it looks as if President Ernesto Samper has been compromised by the drug barons, but this does not seem to have seriously constrained the determination of much of the country's law enforcement apparatus. Compare Colombia with Mexico and Pakistan in terms of effort and there's no contest.

Yet, America's drug war has always lacked fluency. In president Ronald Reagan's day, one could simply say it had a mistaken emphasis on suppliers rather than on consumers. It appeared to ignore the fact that drug trafficking is demand-fed, so it single-mindedly -- if not uniformly -- went after the growers and suppliers in Asia and Latin America.

This is no longer quite so true. Nowadays, more importance is attached to going after consumers, who overwhelmingly happen to be of African-American descent.

If you are convicted of possessing 5 grams of cocaine -- an essentially middle-class crime nowadays -- the maximum penalty is a year in prison. But if you are convicted of possessing 5 grams of crack cocaine -- a black working-class crime which is being prosecuted with ever-increasing vigor -- it is a felony with a mandatory five-year sentence.

This, more than anything, accounts for the sharp rise in America's prison population. Jails are now over-crammed with young black men, serving unusually long terms for non-violent, petty crimes.

If America were truly consistent in believing the answer to large-scale drug trafficking lay in the demand as well as the supply side, it would incarcerate at the same rate as young working-class blacks all those white professionals who purchase their drugs at the tennis club or from "friends" around the corner near the office.

America now has the worst of both worlds: a discriminatory policy aimed at only a part of the demand side, and only part of the supply side as well.

Yet even if it were consistent across the board, could a government ever defeat a business which has now become so powerful and well-organized? The racketeers simply thrive on illegality.

The real answer, I'm more than ever convinced, lies in decriminalization. The U.S. must do what it did in 1933 with alcohol -- end prohibition, and thus pull the rug firmly from under the mafia's feet. When there's no profit in the black market, the drug trade will be crime-free, as is the once gang- ridden drinks trade.

For those who say that this merely blesses an outrage, there are lessons to be learned from the way industrializing Britain dealt with the cheap gin epidemic in the 18th century, captured with all its degradation and human horror in the drawings of Hogarth.

Cheap bootleg gin almost destroyed the working class. Productivity fell and families were destroyed. After protracted and tortured debate, Parliament decided not to repress gin, but to upgrade it. A government body was established to monitor the quality of spirits with the express purpose of cutting out poisonous adulterants. Tax reform made less harmful beer cheaper than stupefying spirits. Gradually, some sort of discipline was brought into the booze business.

The same must be done with drugs. They must be openly sold and taxed. Impure forms like crack must be prohibited. A ceaseless battle must be waged (as has been for the most part successfully done during the last two decades against alcohol, cigarettes and fatty foods) to educate people away from drug use. For those who succumb to addiction -- whose numbers are at present far less with drugs than with alcohol -- remedial facilities have to be provided, financed out of the tax on legal drugs.

Drug consumers are not destroying whole countries of people. Drug racketeers and profiteers are. Drug consumers, as compared to alcohol consumers, rarely kill either other people or themselves. Traffickers do.

The overriding priority today must be to remove the black market profits from the drug business. That is the only way to win the war against the destruction of civilized nations, and probably the only way to get some consistency in policy, both at home and abroad.