AMERICAN ISSUES PROJECT

     WASHINGTON -- During his immersion in his new job, Gil Kerlikowske
attended a focus group of 7-year-old girls and was mystified by their talk
about "farm parties." Then he realized they meant "pharm parties" --
sampling pharmaceuticals from their parents' medicine cabinets. What he
learned -- besides that young humans have less native sense than young
dachshunds have -- is that his job has wrinkles unanticipated when he
became director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
     "People," he says, "want a different conversation" about drug
policies. With his first report to the president early next year, he could
increase the quotient of realism.
     Law enforcement has a "can do culture" but it also instructs its
practitioners about what cannot be done, at least by law enforcement alone.
Kerlikowske, who was top cop in Buffalo and then Seattle, knows that
officers sweeping drug users from cities' streets feel as though they are
"regurgitating perps through the system."
      He dryly notes that "not many people think the drug war is a
success." Furthermore, the recession's toll on state budgets has
concentrated minds on the costs of drug offense incarcerations -- costs
that in some states are larger than expenditures on secondary education.
Fortunately, the first drug courts were established two decades ago and
today there are 2,300 nationwide, pointing drug policy away from punishment
and toward treatment.
     Kerlikowske is familiar with Portugal's experience since 2001 with
decriminalization of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. Nature made
Kerlikowske laconic and experience has made him prudent, so he steers clear
of the "L" word, legalization, even regarding marijuana.
     Asked if he thinks that is a "gateway" drug leading to worse
substances, he answers obliquely: "You don't find many heroin users who
didn't start with marijuana." And he warns that more intense cultivation of
marijuana is yielding a product with notably high THC content -- the potent
ingredient.
     In 1998, the United Nations, with its penchant for empty
grandstanding, committed its members to "eliminating or significantly
reducing" opium, cocaine and marijuana production by 2008, en route to a
"drug-free world." Nowadays the U.N. is pleased that the drug trade has
"stabilized."
     The Economist magazine says this means that more than 200 million
people -- almost 5 percent of the world's adult population -- take illegal
drugs, the same proportion as a decade ago. The annual U.S. bill for
attempting to diminish the supply of drugs is $40 billion. Of the 1.5
million Americans arrested each year on drug offenses, half a million are
incarcerated. "Tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black
American men spend some time behind bars," The Economist said.
     "There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the
incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably
America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer." Do cultural
differences explain this? Evidently not: "Even in fairly similar countries
tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden
and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates."
     The good news is the progress America has made against tobacco, which
is more addictive than most illegal drugs. And then there is alcohol.
     In "Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson," historian David S.
Reynolds writes that in 1820, Americans spent on liquor a sum larger than
the federal government's budget. By the mid-1820s, annual per capita
consumption of absolute alcohol reached seven gallons, more than three
times today's rate. "Most employers," Reynolds reports, "assumed that their
workers needed strong drink for stimulation: a typical workday included two
bells, one rung at 11 a.m. and the other at 4 p.m., that summoned employees
for alcoholic drinks."
     The elderly Walt Whitman said, "It is very hard for the present
generation anyhow to understand the drinkingness of those years. ... it is
quite incommunicable." In 1842, a Springfield, Ill., teetotaler named
Lincoln said that liquor was "like the Egyptian angel of death,
commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born in every family."
Which helps explain why the nation sobered up (somewhat; these things are
relative). One reason crack cocaine use has declined is that a generation
of inner-city young people saw what it did to their parents and older
siblings.
     Kerlikowske can hope that social learning, although slow and
intermittent, is on his side. But perhaps he knows the axiom that
experience is a great teacher, but submits steep bills.

     George Will's e-mail address is georgewill(at)washpost.com.

     (c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group

George F. Will is a nationally syndicated columnist who writes about foreign and domestic politics and policy. His column appears on Thursdays and Sundays. Will began his syndicated column with The Washington Post on Jan. 1, 1974. Two years later he started his back-page Newsweek column.

Posted 10-28-2009 12:01 AM

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