NYTimes.com > Opinion

Debunking the Drug WarBy JOHN TIERNEY

Published: August 9, 2005

America has a serious drug problem, but it's not the "meth epidemic"
getting so much publicity. It's the problem identified by William
Bennett, the former national drug czar and gambler.

"Using drugs," he wrote, "is wrong not simply because drugs create
medical problems; it is wrong because drugs destroy one's moral
sense. People addicted to drugs neglect their duties."

This problem afflicts a small minority of the people who have tried
methamphetamines, but most of the law-enforcement officials and
politicians who lead the war against drugs. They're so consumed with
drugs that they've lost sight of their duties.

Like addicts desperate for a high, they've declared meth the new
crack, which was once called the new heroin (that title now belongs
to OxyContin). With the help of the press, they're once again
frightening the public with tales of a drug so seductive it
instantly turns masses of upstanding citizens into addicts who ruin
their health, their lives and their families.

Amphetamines can certainly do harm and are a fad in some places. But
there's little evidence of a new national epidemic from patterns of
drug arrests or drug use. The percentage of high school seniors
using amphetamines has remained fairly constant in the past decade,
and actually declined slightly the past two years.

Nor is meth diabolically addictive. If an addict is someone who has
used a drug in the previous month (a commonly used, if overly broad,
definition), then only 5 percent of Americans who have sampled meth
would be called addicts, according to the federal government's
National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

That figure is slightly higher than the addiction rate for people
who have sampled heroin (3 percent), but it's lower than for crack
(8 percent), painkillers (10 percent), marijuana (15 percent) or
cigarettes (37 percent). Among people who have sampled alcohol, 60
percent had a drink the previous month, and 27 percent went on a
binge (defined as five drinks on one occasion) during the month.

Drug warriors point to the dangers of home-cooked meth labs, which
start fires and create toxic waste. But those labs and the burn
victims are a result of the drug war itself.

Amphetamine pills were easily available, sold over the counter until
the 1950's, then routinely prescribed by doctors to patients who
wanted to lose weight or stay awake. It was only after the
authorities cracked down in the 1970's that many people turned to
home labs, criminal gangs and more dangerous ways of ingesting the
drug.

It's the same pattern observed during Prohibition, when illicit
stills would blow up, and there was a rise in deaths from alcohol
poisoning. Far from instilling virtue in Americans, Prohibition
caused them to switch from beer and wine to hard liquor. Overall
consumption of alcohol might even have increased.

Today we tolerate alcohol, even though it causes far more harm than
illegal drugs, because we realize a ban would be futile, create more
problems than it cured and deprive too many people of something they
value.

Amphetamines have benefits, too, which is why Air Force pilots are
given them. "Most people took amphetamines responsibly when they
were freely available," said Jacob Sullum, the author of "Saying
Yes," a book debunking drug scares. "Like most drugs, their benefits
outweigh the costs for most people. I'd rather be driving next to a
truck driver on speed than a truck driver who's falling sleep."

Shutting down every meth lab in America wouldn't eliminate meth
because most of it is imported, but the police and prosecutors have
escalated their efforts anyway and inflicted more collateral damage.

In Georgia they're prosecuting dozens of Indian convenience-store
clerks and managers for selling cold medicine and other legal
products. As Kate Zernike reported in The Times, some of them spoke
little English and seemed to have no idea the medicine was being
used to make meth.

The prosecutors seem afflicted by the confused moral thinking that
Mr. Bennett blames on narcotics. "Drugs," he wrote, "undermine the
necessary virtues of a free society - autonomy, self-reliance and
individual responsibility."

If you value individual responsibility, why send a hard-working
clerk to jail for not divining that someone else might manufacture a
drug? And why spend three decades repeating the errors of
Prohibition for a drug that was never as dangerous as alcohol in the
first place? 

E-mail: tierney@nytimes.com