From: Jim Rosenfield 
Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
Subject: NYT Ed: Call it War
Message-ID: 
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 1994 20:56:05 -0800 (PST)

From: Jim Rosenfield 

Here is the Max Frankel column from the Sunday Times Magazine.

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Max Frankel-New York Times Magazine
December 18, 1994

O.K., Call it War

I used to hate hearing about the "war" against drugs, and as executive
editor tried to discourage that metaphor in The Times.  But the politicians
won the battle of the cliche even as they were losing the war.  The "was"
term appeared in this newspaper only 16 times in all of 1981, but 66 times
in 1987 and 511 times in 1989 after President Bush promised at his
inaugural "Tale my word for it, this scourge will stop."  Well, it didn't
and we are down to about 100 mentions on each of the Clinton years, a mere
twice a week.  And now I'm sorry, for it's time the media began to cover
the war on drugs as a war-the way they covered the last war that America
Lost. 
The better newspapers are portraying the drug quagmire the way they once 
portrayed the quagmire in Viet Nam.  Dispatches from the front find cops 
risking life and limb to drag users and dealers, but just as many stalk 
the streets the next night.  The brass that's bragging about progress and 
calling for still more troops, weapons, prisons, and money must be 
smoking something.
If the newspapers, magazines and TV networks would agree that the's a was 
on, maybe they would report a monthly "bag count"- the number of 
kilo-size packs of cocaine or heroin seized by t Federal, state, and 
local raiders in urban hideaways, remote marinas and canine stomachs.  
They could point out that the bag count, much like the Vietnam body 
count, is a meaningless index of progress in the was; no matter how 
impressive the seizure, the flow of the bags in the underground drug 
channels continues relentlessly.
The press has been too generous with pictures of porcesutors and 
politicians posing with the mounds of heroin and cocaine they've 
stumbled across somewhere.  If more of the media would open drug-war 
bureaus in the inner cities, their bravest reporters would find that 
there's no shortage anytime, no increase at all in the street price of 
drugs, just a constant pressure by a guerrilla army of street pushers 
supporting their own  drug habit by enlarging the circle of customers.  
The reporters would document the cost and futility of the pursuit, the 
cynicism and corruption of the pursuers and the serene confidence of a 
wealthy enemy.
Gradually maybe through C-Span "teach-ins" run by such radicals as 
former Secretary of State George Shultz, Mayor Kurt Schmoke of Baltimore 
and William F. Buckley Jr., the commercial networks might learn that the 
war on drugs-meaning the prohibition of drugs- is not only  being lost 
but is also unwinnable.  The radicals have adopted the antiwar slogan of 
:legalization," but the TV anchors don't have to embrace that 
still-undefined remedy.  They need only climb to the rooftops of 
Washington Heights in New York and Cruise down along the Potomac Delta 
while reciting the terrifying findings if their research staffs; the 
direct, recognizable cost of this war is probably in excess of $100 
billion a year.  There's not even a good estimate of the related crimes 
committed by drug peddles and users, and of the measures taken to prevent 
such crimes,  compensate victims and to punish some of the 
perpetrators.  Hundreds of millions of dollars are being stashed in 
offshore sanctuaries and hundreds of millions more are available to 
import the stuff and to pave the way with bribes and untaxed wages.
Of the 20 million American drug users, maybe 5 million are "seriously" 
addicted.  A year's supply of heroin for all of them can be made from 
opium poppies grown on only 20 square miles of land-not quite the area of 
Manhatten.  A year's supply of coke can be stashed in 13 truck trailers.  
So "eradicating" the supply abroad is impossible; "interdicting" drugs at 
the border is a joke.
About 40,000 Americans die each year of the direct and indirect effects 
of drugs; a large proportion of New York Cities 2,000 annual homicides 
are attributable to drug trafficking.  And drug offenders, whether or not 
they are violent criminals. clog the courts and the prisons.
When finally one of the TV anchors senses that the country is ready to 
hear unvarnished truth, like Walter Cronkite's passionate declaration in 
1968 that it was time to get out of Vietnam, she won't have to bother 
with statistics.  Against a backdrop of gripping graphics, she could 
simply list the war's consequences:
*Urban blight, fear and destruction.
*Neighborhood turf wars and shootouts.
*Family ruin, school failure and wreakage.
*Loss productivity in the economy.
*Crack babies, kids dealing drugs, addicts felled by AIDS.
*Cops corrupted.  Courts and prisons overwhelmed.
*Murder and mayhem clear to the top in Mexico, Columbia and other 
countries that cannot resist supplying the rich American market.  And in 
American, contempt for government- and despair.

If the prohibition of drugs is a lost cause then "legalization" - in some 
form- is inevitable.  But the word "legalization" has been demonized, 
like "negotiation" before Kissinger sat down in Paris.  A year ago 
Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was pilloried- and disowned by her 
President- for recommending "some studies" of how drugs might be 
legalized and regulated.  Most Americans still think legalization would 
constitute "surrender" in immorality.  Some call it "genocide" because 
they imagine ghetto children lining up at the corner drugstore for their 
daily fix.
Not until we in the media do a better job of reporting the horrendous 
costs of this unwinnable war will the public consider alternative 
politics.  By definition, legalizing drugs would put the big dealers and 
their gun-toting distributors out of business.  It would also keep most 
users from having to steal to support the habit.  That alone would 
liberate a great deal of money and energy for reclaiming wrecked lives 
and neighborhoods.
Like the Surgeon General, I don't pretend to know how a legal drug trade 
might be managed.  Maybe drugs should be sold inexpensively to adults 
through Government outlets, like ABC liquor stores that many states 
opened after prohibition.  Maybe drugs should be given away at 
neighborhood dispensaries that also offer treatment to cure addiction.  
Maybe dozens of experiments are in order.
By all means, let's call it a war.  Then deal with defeat.