Real drug enemy is user, not producer
The headline of your Aug. 12 editorial, "Unglamorous coke fight still a worthy one," was incomplete. It should have continued, "but not using the weapons we are currently using."
The data in your editorial make it perfectly clear that the "fight" is ineffective, assuming that the goal is a drug-free America. "Treatment admissions in Illinois have doubled since 1990 and estimates are there are 260 thousand hard-core crack cocaine users in Cook County," it said.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, $73 billion was spent by the federal government in drug control between 1996 and 2003 and the amount has risen annually in those years.
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, the estimated number of people who first used marijuana, ecstasy and pain relievers non-medically rose from 3.1 million to 6.0 million between 1980 and 2002. According to the FBI, the estimated number of drug abuse violation arrests rose from 600,000 to five million between 1980 and 2002.
It is beside the point to say, "Yes, but things would have been worse if we hadn't done something." It seems to me the question is, "Do we or do we not want a drug free society"?
If we do, then we must change our "weapons" in this war. The record suggests that attacking supply as a way to reduce demand is fighting a losing battle. Sophisticated economists, most notably the late Milton Friedman, have argued that the power of the market is just too great and that the unintended consequences are bound to cause both more bloodshed and more corruption.
And who is the market? Those of our people who either by addiction or choice are drug users. There is an expression in industry, "Show me a market and I'll show you a product." Certainly there is a market, and the producers have responded.
So, what to do? A suggestion: Assign one of your good feature writers to write a series of front page articles in order to provoke public discussion with the goal of agreement on and action to be taken.
As a starting point: the pros and cons of legalizing drugs. If you think that is too incendiary, I refer you to the Web site of the non-partisan opinion research and civic engagement organization, Public Agenda, which presents three perspectives on the subject.
Surely, if government can get control of the addictive drug nicotine, there should be some way to get control of illegal drugs.
Gus Leep
West Dundee