Thinking the Unthinkable

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Neat little packets of marijuana, coke and even heroin nestling against the vitamins at the neighborhood drugstore? And selling at a low Government-set price with a guarantee of purity? It sounds like a black comedy or perhaps a gaudy hallucination. In fact, it is the extreme version of a new policy course being advocated in dead seriousness by a growing number of those frustrated by the futility of the drug war. The 74 years of federal prohibition that have passed since the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 have been a costly and abject failure, they say, and the effort is doomed. It has mainly served to create huge profits for drug dealers, overcrowded jails, a distorted foreign policy and urban areas terrorized by bloodthirsty gangs. So why not end all these problems in a way that would save money, perhaps even raise it, and free more resources to treat addiction and abuse? Why not just make drugs legal?

Those who have begun to take this question seriously do not in the least want to condone, let alone encourage, drug use. The swelling chorus includes conservative scholars, police officers and city officials who would love to see a dope-free nation. But they feel that the best way to curtail drugs is to treat them as a public health problem rather than a criminal one. In the process, the Government could take the drug market out of the hands of the gangs that have turned large sections of major cities into shooting galleries, in more ways than one.

, Such talk horrifies many critics equally bedeviled by the drug dilemma. To them legalization is an immoral and dangerous policy that would vastly increase the number of addicts and turn the U.S. into a "society of zombies," in the words of New York Republican Senator Alfonse D'Amato. If drugs were freely available, what is now a nagging but contained problem could end up tearing apart the nation's social fabric.

Whether it is inspired or insane, drug legalization has become the idea of the moment. That in itself shows the intensity of the national frenzy that has erupted once again to do something -- anything -- about drugs and related crime. Polls show drugs emerging as the hottest issue in the presidential election. In a New York Times-CBS News survey last week, 16% of those questioned called drugs the nation's No. 1 problem. It has direct political consequences: respondents thought Democrats would do a better job than the Administration in fighting drugs. They favored Michael Dukakis over George Bush, reinforcing a trend that first appeared in a TIME poll five weeks ago.

Campaigning in New Jersey, Dukakis sought to capitalize on this advantage: he walked with a hand-held microphone among 500 students at the Pine Brook Junior High School in Manalapan to preach an antidrug sermon. At a later press conference, he once again criticized the Reagan Administration for cutting funds for antidrug programs.

Ronald Reagan was supposed to focus his commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., on the Moscow summit. Instead he talked almost entirely about drugs. The President attempted to drain some political emotion from the subject by calling for a bipartisan commission to study what could be done (ignoring the fact that antidrug programs already enjoy wide bipartisan support in Congress). Bush, meanwhile, toured a crack den in Los Angeles that had been closed by police raids and tried to sound tougher on drugs than anybody else -- including his chief.

For the first time, Bush publicly distanced himself from Reagan. In a carefully choreographed disagreement, the Vice President implied that he would not make a deal with Panama's Manuel Antonio Noriega; the Administration at the time was bumbling through yet another week of negotiations with the military dictator that would involve quashing American drug-running indictments against the Panamanian strongman if he stepped down from power. Said Bush: "I won't bargain with drug dealers . . . whether they're on U.S. or foreign soil."

The get-tough approach scored a victory of sorts last week. A Florida jury convicted Carlos Lehder Rivas, a kingpin of Colombia's Medellin cartel drug empire, of conspiring to smuggle 3.3 tons of cocaine into the U.S. He could be sentenced to life plus 150 years in prison. But no one was so naive as to believe jailing Lehder would make a dent in drug smuggling. In Congress, a desperate search was under way to find something that might work. The Senate has followed the House's lead by voting 83 to 6 to force the military to participate in antismuggling efforts. Less certain is the outcome of an amendment to the defense appropriations bill, offered by D'Amato, to institute a federal death penalty for drug-related killings, an idea backed strongly by Reagan and Bush.

Such flopping around on all fronts has become increasingly ineffective. That, in part, is why drug legalization has suddenly emerged as an imaginable alternative. The case begins with a simple proposition: all wars on drugs are doomed to fail, no matter how many Viet Nam-style escalations the authorities order. It is a simple matter of supply and demand: as long as demand exists on the scale of the U.S. craving for, say, cocaine, someone is going to supply it, legally or illegally. Significantly, this line is voiced by a growing number of public officials who were once enthusiastic soldiers in the war on drugs but have been bitterly disillusioned.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke claims to have "won thousands of convictions for drug-related crimes" during his seven-year career as a prosecutor. But it was he who started much of the furor over legalization by calling for a national debate on the issue in an April speech to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. For drug dealers, says Schmoke, "going to jail is just part of the cost of doing business. It's a nuisance, not a deterrent."

Joseph McNamara, police chief in San Jose, in the drug-ridden Silicon Valley, estimates that his department spends 80% of its time trying to enforce the drug laws. "The fight against drugs for the past 70 years has been one long glorious failure," he says. "The courts are overflowing, there is violence on the streets, and the problem seems to be getting worse."

Indeed, say most proponents of legalization, the antinarcotics laws create an evil worse than the drugs themselves: violent crime. Laws to stop the supply do not prevent anyone who really wants cocaine or heroin from getting ( it. But they do permit the sellers to charge sky-high prices as a kind of risk premium. The high prices, in turn, produce enormous profits that irresistibly lure vicious gangs, who are taking over large areas of cities. The gangs employ armies of pushers who spread the very plague the drug laws are supposed to combat. Says Milton Friedman, guru of free-market economists and a Nobel prizewinner: "The harm that is done by drugs is predominantly caused by the fact that they are illegal. You would not have had the crack epidemic if it was legal." Finally, addicts too are irresistibly driven to crime -- prostitution, mugging, burglary -- to finance their habits.

The great promise of legalization, say its advocates, is that it would rip this cancer out of the cities. If drugs were legal, the Government could regulate their sale and set a low price. Addicts could get a fix without stealing, and a lack of profit would dismantle the booming criminal industry that now supplies them. Drug gangs would disappear as bootleggers did after the repeal of Prohibition; with them would go the current, pervasive corruption of police officers, lawyers, judges and politicians bribed by drug money. Drug dealing would no longer seem to be the only way out of the ghetto for underclass youths. Says Mayor Schmoke: "If you take the profit out of drug trafficking, you won't have young children hiding drugs ((on behalf of pushers)) for $100 a night or wearing beepers to school because it makes more sense to run drugs for someone than to take some of the jobs that are available. I don't know of any kid who is making money by running booze." The bottom line for those favoring legalization: drug-related crime damages society far more than drug usage itself.

But many see benefits from legalization that go beyond easing the crime problem. Princeton Professor Ethan Nadelmann estimates that federal, state and local governments are spending around $8 billion a year on direct drug- enforcement activities and billions more for such indirect costs as care and feeding of imprisoned drug dealers (people convicted of drug-related crimes constitute more than one-third of all federal prisoners). Legalization not only would save these enormous expenditures but also could bring in billions more in new revenues if governments chose to tax the sale of newly legal drugs (as they surely would). Nadelmann and others suggest that the money be used to fund an antidrug program that might actually work: a long, persistent ^ educational effort of the sort that has reduced cigarette smoking, plus expanded treatment programs for drug abusers.

One of the most shocking deficiencies in the fight against drugs is that addicts who want to kick their habits often must wait months before being admitted to a rehabilitation center, if they can find one at all. Legalization, say advocates, might at last give governments the revenue to fund rehabilitation and treatment adequately.

Other arguments for legalization differ widely depending on the speaker. That is hardly surprising, since the trend cannot properly be called a "movement." It is a very unorganized current of thought with adherents from every part of the political spectrum. Some extreme libertarians contend that the Government has no business telling citizens what they may or may not put into their bodies. A much larger group contends that it is hypocritical to ban narcotics while allowing the sale of alcohol and tobacco, two substances that, this group insists, kill far more people by undermining their health and, in the case of alcohol, lead to innumerable auto crashes, barroom brawls and savage family fights. "We've already decriminalized two drugs, alcohol and tobacco," says Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz. "Now it's time to decriminalize a third, heroin."

Some advocates contend that legalization will also help U.S. foreign policy. They assert, with some justification, that the futile effort to stop drug smuggling is poisoning American relations with such important and otherwise friendly Latin nations as Colombia and Mexico that have been unable or unwilling to crack down on the drug trade. Finally, on the left, some advocates contend that legalization would remove a severe threat to individual freedom that is posed by widespread drug searches, demands for wholesale testing and the pending use of the military to enforce drug laws. If the sale of narcotics is permitted, says Harvard Psychiatrist Lester Grinspoon, "there won't be the tremendous encroachment on our civil liberties. Are we willing to sacrifice our freedom for the small increase in the number of people who may use the drugs under a legalized system?"

Advocates of legalization are still more disunited when it comes to spelling out a practical program, which hardly anyone has ventured to do. Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel, who represents a drug-riddled district in New York City's Harlem, poses a long string of questions for those who would legalize drugs. Among them: Which drugs should be permitted, just marijuana or the more damaging heroin, cocaine and angel dust? How would they be sold, by prescription through hospitals and clinics or in "drugstores," tobacco shops, even supermarkets? Would there be an age limit, and how would it be enforced? Would users be permitted to buy as much as they wanted, even if their demands became insatiable as their addictions deepened? Or would there be some kind of so-many-grams-per- customer limit? If so, again, how would it be enforced? As long as these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered, says Rangel sarcastically, legalization will remain "idle chitchat as cocktail glasses knock together at social events."

Attempts to answer such questions scatter all over the lot. A common proposal is to handle the sale of narcotics in a manner similar to the sale of alcohol. The substances could be sold only by licensed dealers, who would be taxed and heavily regulated; for example, they would be forbidden to sell to anyone under 21 years old. But there are many variations. Some supporters would permit the legal sale of marijuana only; Washington Mayor Marion Barry might add cocaine but is dead set against legalizing PCP (angel dust). Economist Friedman would permit the sale of every imaginable brand of upper and downer at the local drugstore. Dershowitz would go so far as to distribute heroin free from mobile vans in inner cities to "medically certified addicts."

A good many people would stop short of full-scale legalization and opt for a rather vague concept known as decriminalization. It is generally taken to mean reducing or eliminating criminal penalties for the use and perhaps sale of drugs, while retaining some form of legal disapproval. Such a halfway solution might accelerate the problems that would come from legalization without solving most of those that arise from the current tough drug laws. Author Claude Brown (Manchild in the Promised Land), himself a reformed drug dealer, suggests decriminalizing the sale of drugs by hospitals and clinics in order to "deglamorize ((narcotics use)) and associate it with being sick. That would turn the kids off."

Intuitively and emotionally, the case for legalization may be hard to accept. Opponents insist that on a pragmatic and logical level it is also a dangerous and harebrained folly. Dukakis told several questioning New Jersey voters last week that he opposes legalization, and Reagan agreed in an interview with TIME and other newsmagazines. Said the President: "Oh yes, I am definitely against it. We're talking about something that destroys people's lives . . . to the point that they're no longer normal human beings." Reagan drew an angry picture of future decadence: "You drive down the highway, and you look up, and there's a billboard, and it doesn't say EAT JELL-O; it says TRY COCAINE. And your papers and your magazines ((would be)) full of attractive ads saying OH, HAVE A BALL, GET STONED ON COCAINE, YOU'LL NEVER TRY ANYTHING ELSE." Senator D'Amato earlier sardonically suggested some snappier slogans: "The weekend belongs to heroin," for example, or "This crack's for you."

Actually, most advocates of legalization would ban drug advertising. But opponents argue vehemently that the very fact of legalization would constitute a powerful form of advertising. However loudly Washington might proclaim that it was not condoning narcotics abuse, the message that would come through on the streets would be "the Government says it's O.K.," and that message would overpower any stepped-up educational efforts about the dangers of drugs. One peculiar aspect of modern American society is that little distinction is made between what is legal and what is socially condoned.

With the legal stigma gone, even law-abiding citizens would be tempted to experiment with narcotics. For one thing, it is much easier to resist the urge to try drugs when the purchase involves a drive into a dark and crime-ridden part of town to make a furtive connection in a garbage-strewn alley, much more difficult when the buy requires nothing more dangerous than walking into a pharmacy. And a large number of those who experimented would get hooked.

So, opponents predict, the result of legalization would be an enormous increase in drug abuse, with all of its penalties of shattered health, families and lives. This belief, significantly, is particularly strong among many people who work with addicts. "To legalize drugs would give us a vast army of people who would be out of control," says Mitchell Rosenthal, president of Phoenix House, a New York City-based drug-rehabilitation program. "People say only 10% of those who drink are problem drinkers, so they assume that only 10% of the people who take drugs will become addicts. But there is no reason to believe that if we made crack available in little crack shops that only 10% would be addicted; the number would probably be more like 75%."

& To risk such a debacle, in the view of many, is not just mistaken policy but morally wrong. Legalization, says Harvard Psychiatrist Robert Coles, would be a "moral surrender of far-reaching implications about the way we treat each other." Coles specializes in working with children and says they "need the societal order to say we stand for something." He fears that legalization would instead send a message of unrestricted hedonism. "I'm not prepared as a parent, as a citizen or as a doctor to say that," Coles asserts.

Opponents of legalization also turn the comparison with alcohol around. Sure, alcohol may be as dangerous as some illegal drugs, but the very fact that it is so harmful to society is all the more reason not to add to the number of dangerous substances that can be abused. "We're just finally beginning to recognize what it means to use cigarettes," says Coles, "and to turn around and say it's all right to use heroin and marijuana is wrong."

John Lawn, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, summarizes pithily: "Drugs are not bad because they're illegal. They're illegal because they're bad." The legal production and sale of drugs would threaten all of society. But there is, some say, an insidious racist aspect. Notes Lawn: "Anyone who talks in terms of legalizing drugs is willing to write the death warrants for people in the lower socioeconomic classes."

At least one person with still greater firsthand experience with drugs agrees. "Paul," a Los Angeles musician, has been using cocaine for three years and spends about $300 a weekend on the drug. He readily admits that it is rapidly destroying both his marriage and his life. "I'm trying to gear myself up for seeking treatment," he says. But what would he do if the drug were legally available at lower prices? "I'd be dead right now," he says. "I'd just sit down with a big pile of the stuff and snort it until I dropped. Only a real cocaine connoisseur can appreciate what I mean."

Some advocates of legalization, like Professor Nadelmann, insist that there is a natural limit to addiction that will hold down any increase; those who do not have addictive personalities will not be tempted whether drugs are legal or illegal. But others fear the opposition just might be right. "I have a horrible feeling that addiction definitely will increase," says Conservative Columnist William F. Buckley, who nonetheless advocates legalization because of the prospective drop in crime.

Yet some opposed to legalization doubt that it would really wipe out drug crime, at least to the extent that the supporters claim. The contention of those opposed: unless the Government allows users to purchase unlimited quantities of drugs anonymously -- an idea that makes most legalizers squirm -- there will always be a black market. The market might be broadened if, as many legalizers advocate, the Government taxed legal sales of narcotics. In addition, drug abuse even at legal prices would require money; few addicts could hold regular jobs; and many would thus continue to steal or prostitute themselves for drug money.

Another kind of crime might actually increase with the number of addicts: crimes committed by those whose minds are fuddled and emotions inflamed by drugs. Says President Reagan's drug adviser Donald Macdonald: "These drugs cause crime. PCP makes people crazy. Cocaine makes people paranoid. The airplane flying into the mountain in Durango with the pilot on cocaine, that will increase. Highway accidents, family violence, spouse abuse, child abuse, incest will all increase."

Opponents are particularly upset that the cry for legalization is rising just as some signs -- faint and ambiguous, to be sure -- indicate that the war on drugs might be gaining ground. In the University of Michigan's annual survey, the number of high school seniors who admitted to having tried cocaine dropped from 12.7% in 1986 to 10.3% last year; among college students, the proportion fell from 17% to 14%. Perhaps more significant, 48% of high school seniors surveyed last year viewed cocaine as a "great risk," vs. only 34% in 1986.

The figures are not conclusive; they do not include dropouts, who would be much more likely to abuse drugs than youths who stay in school. Nonetheless, says Rudolph Giuliani, U.S. Attorney in New York and a celebrated prosecutor of drug cases, "it's a particularly strange time to raise the specter of legalization because we are finally beginning to change the drug culture of the 1960s and '70s." Legalization, he fears, would wipe out all the progress. "You can't say drugs are bad at the same time that you are making them legal. Law is a teaching instrument, among other things."

The legalization debate, to some extent, pits proponents, who would accept more drug abuse as the terrible price of reducing crime, against opponents, who would accept a continued high level of crime as the equally dreadful price & of holding down addiction. In fact, neither side can be sure to what extent legalization would reduce crime and increase addiction, unless it is tried. But the idea is risky, exceedingly risky.

More fundamentally, the debate is over the role of law in upholding the nation's moral fabric. One function of the law is to express society's moral disapproval of or repugnance to an activity. Although that may sometimes conflict with personal freedom or even pragmatic considerations, it is still a principle that helps order American society, as it does every civilization.

The emergence of a strong and cogent case for drug legalization, even if it is a misguided approach, has pointed out a real and serious fault in current policy. It is heavily unbalanced in favor of ineffective attempts to cut the supply through police action, while neglecting potentially more effective efforts to reduce demand through education and treatment. Says Minneapolis Mayor Donald Fraser: "Personally, I'm not willing to say drugs should be decriminalized. But investing large amounts of money to interdict supply obviously is not working. We've spent over $300,000 in the past few months in police overtime alone raiding crack houses. We've brought in front-end loaders to knock down walls to get into some of these places, but as soon as we put one out of business, another springs up. We need to direct more attention from interdiction efforts to educating the user to reject drugs." Giuliani, while favoring more enforcement and tougher penalties, in part agrees. Says he: "We spend less than $500 million on treatment and education, and that is nowhere near what needs to be spent."

So even though corner drug shops are not going to pop up anytime soon, nor should they, the hot new debate over legalization is a significant one. It reflects the widespread and understandable dismay over antidrug efforts that have gone to such discomforting lengths as to call in the military without noticeably making a dent in the crime and abuse problems. And it could turn attention to the need for more effective treatment and education efforts, rather than merely more election-year frenzy and posturing.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME Chart by Joe Lertola

[TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: Research Triangle Institute, 1983 figures}]CAPTION: COSTS TO SOCIETY in billions

DESCRIPTION: Dollar cost of crime, treatment and lost productivity related to drugs and alcohol, 1983.

With reporting by Jon D. Hull/Los Angeles, Elaine Shannon/Washington and Janice C. Simpson/New York