>>> Part 7 of 15...
take most of the profit out of drug trafficking, and it is profits that
drive the crime.  Addicts would be treated - and if necessary
maintained - under medical auspices.  Children would find it harder,
not easier, to get their hands on drugs.  And law enforcement would be
able to concentrate on the highest echelons of drug-trafficking
enterprises.
I do not specifically endorse the idea of a federal drugstore,
particularly if that means selling drugs to people who are not already
physically or psychologically addicted. On the other hand, I do support
a national commission to study all possible alternatives (including
legalization) to our failed strategy of blanket prohibition.  This
commission would be similar to the 1929 Wickersham Commission, which
President Hoover set up to study how to enforce alcohol prohibition
more strictly. Although Hoover tried to conceal the results, the
commission concluded that alcohol prohibition was, in the words of
Walter Lippmann, a "helpless failure." I believe that an objective and
nonpartisan inquiry would come to the same conclusion about the war
on drugs.
I also support Mr. Buckley's idea of approving a "utilitarian" calculus
to the war on drugs.  Congress is quite enthusiastic about weighing the
costs and benefits of health care, welfare, community development, and
other domestic programs.  It should apply a similar analysis to the war
on drugs, a war that is now costing the Federal Government $14 billion
a year.
In weighing the costs and benefits, Congress would not have to start
from scratch.  There have been many studies and experiments, including
our needle-exchange program in Baltimore.  This program costs $160,000
a year.  The cost to the state of Maryland of taking care of just one
adult AIDS patient infected through the sharing of a syringe is
$102,000 to $120,000.  In other words, if just two addicts are
protected from HIV through the city's needle exchange, the program will
have paid for itself.
But a cost-benefit analysis for the war on drugs would do more than
offer a guide to the sensible allocation of federal dollars.  It would
also make advocating changes in the war on drugs less politically risky
for elected officials.  Unfortunately, that risk has kept most
political leaders in lockstep support of the war on drugs.
I understand their reluctance to call for an end to blanket
prohibition, especially since individual mayors and governors cannot,
by themselves, end the war on drugs or its devastating effects on their
communities.  However, I also believe that the political risks of
debating and criticizing the war on drugs have been overstated.  I have
been reelected twice since 1988.  In my most recent election, last
year, my opponent specifically attacked my call for a new strategy in
the war on drugs.  She advocated "zero tolerance," which is more of a
slogan than a policy, and said she would sign the Atlanta resolution,
which supports the status quo.  In spite of her distortions of my
record on drug policy, I won re-election by a 20-point margin, the
widest margin in my political career.
Although I strongly believe that changes in national drug policy must
be national in scope, I have nevertheless tried to demonstrate that
some reforms can be made on local level.  For example, in 1993 I formed
a Mayor's Working Group on Drug Policy Reform, and I have since
implemented most of its major recommendations.  These recommendations
included providing for more community policing; encouraging Baltimore's
teaching hospitals to make addiction treatment a larger part of their
curriculum; and, most important, developing the needle-exchange program
mentioned above.
Needle exchange was my top legislative priority 1994.  We could not
begin the program without a change in the state's drug-paraphernalia
laws.  In the previous two years, lawmakers had been reluctant to go
along, in part out of fear that they would be accused of condoning drug
use. But in 1994, we were able to convince the legislature that needle
exchange would not increase drug use but instead would save lives, and
perhaps even reduce crime.
The most politically effective argument in selling needle exchange was
that it would slow the spread of AIDS.  That is because 70 per cent of
new AIDS cases in Baltimore are related to intravenous drug use, and
AIDS is now the number-one killer of both young men and young women in
Baltimore. (This crisis is not unique to Baltimore, and the problem is
especially horrendous for African-Americans.  A recent report entitled
_Health Emergency: The Spread of Drug-Related AIDS among African-
Americans and Latinos_, shows that 73,000 African-Americans have drug-
related AIDS or have died from it.  Among people who inject drugs,
African-Americans are almost 5 times as likely as whites to be
diagnosed with AIDS.  And for African-Americans, the risk of getting
AIDS is 7 times greater than the risk of dying from overdose.)
I'm proud that Baltimore now has the largest government-run needle
exchange program in the country.  That program is being thoroughly
evaluated by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene.  I
expect that evaluation to show that needle exchange is saving lives, a
claim that the war on drugs has not been able to make for instead more
than eighty years.
Mario Cuomo once made an observation that both liberals and
conservatives should feel comfortable endorsing.  He said that
policymakers must distinguish between ideas that sound good and good
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