Political Notes (Page 3)

Quote/Unquote

Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, after suggestion by the surgeon-genral, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, that the government study the legalization of drugs: "Legalization is an open invitation for people to destroy their lives."(AP)

-Giving In Won't Make Drugs Go Away-(Page 6) By A.M.Rosenthal

New York-The surgeon general of the United States is giving the cause of narcotics legalization its biggest boost ever in America. Dr.Joycelyn Elders thinks that legalization of narcotics would reduce crime. She wants "studies" to be made of the idea. "Studies" is a pretty word for the road of legalization. The only further study with any meaning would be to see how it works in the United States-buying, selling and using narcotics, openly, without penalty. Maybe her home state of Arkansas and other sensible Americans will decide instead that her naiveté, at best, about drug legalization makes her unfit to be chief medical officer of the United States. Bill Clinton made her state director of health while he was governor of Arkansas. As president he made her surgeon general. The White House says the president is still against legalization, but that Dr.Elders is an outspoken sort who can be expected to pop out with ideas of her own. But didn't they ever talk about drugs, Mr Clinton and Dr. Elders, those years i

n Arkansas when she was state health director? Or when she was considered for surgeon general, did anybody at all probe into her attitudes about drug control-or drug surrender? Morally, legalization is a bottom-line approach to drug abuse: Fighting drugs is difficult and expensive, we are losing, so let's give in.

If THEY want to use drugs, save money and trouble by letting them. Crime will decrease because drug gangs will go out of business and the stuff will be so cheap and available everywhere that addicts will not have to steal or mug to get it. The bottom-line attitude is callous to the point of cruelty. It also won't work. It is based on ignorance or distortion of drug realities. The drug war is not won but it has paid off. Heroin addiction has been stable at about a half-million since 1972. Legalization would have brought low-cost heroin, and probably a couple of million more addicts. Crack cocaine: In high school, fewer student are using it. Crack use is a common cause, and result, of dropping out. How will making cocaine entirely available, penalty-free, prevent even more students from dropping out? I don't grasp that. Legalization will achieve the purpose of a free market-to increase supply, improve distribution, make customers, cut prices. Reduce crime? A sour joke. Legalization might cut the number of drug

pushers killing each other or bystanders. By this logic, armed robbery should be legalized. Then nobody would get hurt. But drug availability, legal or not, means drug abuse. Abuse of alcohol destroy homes and lives. Abuse of narcotics does all that and also crowds the jails. Drug addicts do not mug or steal simply to get money for a fix. By the thousands, crimes are committed by drug-inflamed addicts. Drugs drive addicts into gutters in which they exist by crime. How many more babies would die under legalization - battered by drug-maddened parents or born damaged? How many more Americans would be killed in accidents caused by drugged-out drivers? Money: We would be spending more, on more crime by more addicts, on care for more Americans driven into hospitals or the streets. The way out is to do our weary best to stop drugs from coming into the country. The way out is to fight drugs on the streets and in schools. The way out is not perpetuation of drug abuse by legalization. From a surgeon general who does

not understand that, we should take neither advice, judgment or an aspirin. The New York Times.

-Don't Write Off Legalization Lightly-

Though such strong men as Senator Bob Dole grew faint over Dr. Jocelyn Elders's hypothetical remarks about drug legalization, she is hardly the first serious person to note that the violence fostered by the black market in drugs constitutes a growing public health problem. Such Republican luminaries as William F. Buckley Jr. and George Shultz, and many other serious thinkers, have called similarly for a rethinking of the "war on drugs." America's demonstrably unsuccessful handling of the drug calamity is not a partisan issue. Let us not bask in moral sanctimony while the black market in drugs and the slaughter in the streets go on.

- Edwin M. Yoder Jr. in The Washington Post.