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also told us that when he went to community meetings he would ask the
audience three questions. 1) "Have we won the drug war?" People
laughed. 2) "Are we winning the drug war?" People shook their heads.
3) "If we keep doing what we are doing will we have won the drug war in
ten years?" The answer was a resounding No.
At the end of the conference, the police participants completed an
evaluation form.  Ninety per cent voted no confidence in the war on
drugs.  They were unanimous in favoring more treatment and education
over more arrests and prisons.  They were unanimous in recommending a
presidential blue-ribbon commission to evaluate the drug war and to
explore alternative methods of drug control.  In sum, the tough-minded
law-enforcement officials took positions directly contrary to those of
Congress and the President.
One hopes that politicians will realize that no one can accuse them of
being soft on drugs if they vote for changes suggested by many
thoughtful people in law enforcement.  If the politicians tone down
their rhetoric it will permit police leaders to expose the costs of our
present drug-control policies.  Public opinion will then allow policy
changes to decriminalize marijuana and stop the arrest of hundreds of
thousands of people every year.  The enormous savings can be used for
what the public really wants-the prevention of violent crime.
Robert W. Sweet
To ponder the legal and judicial problems that arise from the drug war
we turned to Robert Sweet, a District Judge in New York City.  He has
served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and as Deputy Mayor of New York
City under John Lindsay.  He is a graduate of Yale and of Yale Law
School.
Why does a sitting judge, constitutionally charged with enforcing the
laws of the United States, seek the abolition of the criminal penalties
attached to drug use and distribution?  The answer in my case stems
from personal experience, leading to the conviction that our present
policy debases the rule of law and that its fundamental premise is
flawed.
In college in the Forties, while experimenting with the drug of
choice - alcohol - I cheerfully sang the lyrics of "Cocaine Bill and
Morphine Sue," without any understanding of the reality behind the
words.  As an Assistant United States Attorney in the Fifties, I
accepted the enforcement of the drug laws without question.  In the
Sixties, as Deputy Mayor of the City of New York, I supported methadone
and various modalities of treatment and rehabilitation.  After becoming
a federal trial judge in 1978, I presided over drug trials and sought
to impose just sentences ranging from probation to twenty years.
Then Congress enacted mandatory minimum sentences, and judicial
discretion was radically restricted.  The day in the fall of 1988 that
I was mandated to sentence Luis Quinones, an 18-year-old with no prior
record, to ten years of real time because he was a bouncer in an
apartment where drugs were being sold, I faced our national drug policy
and the need to reexamine it.  Assisted by the writings of Professor
Ethan Nadelmann I concluded that our present policy of criminal
prohibition was a monumental error.  A number of other judges have
reached the same conclusion.  Judge Weinstein has characterized our
present policy as "utter futility," and Judge Knapp has likened it to
"taking minnows out of the pond."
As Chief McNamara writes, the realities of criminal prohibition are
becoming recognized.  The first and foremost effect is the creation of
a pervasive and unbelievably powerful underground economy.
The Economist estimates that the markup on cocaine and heroin is not
5,000 per cent, as Messrs.  Buckley and Duke suggest, but 20,000 per
cent.  The drug market in the United States is estimated at $150 billion
a year.  At least one group of distributors in a case before me sold
37,500 kilos of cocaine a month for gross sales of almost $20 million a
month, and this group was but one of a number operating here.
While this economic engine drives forward, so have our efforts to
punish those who operate it.  Today we have the highest incarceration
rate for any Western nation, almost 1 million [There are higher
estimates. -ED.] in jails or prisons at a cost of $20 billion a year.
Federal drug cases have trebled in 10 years, up 25 per cent in 1993
alone, with marijuana cases up 17 per cent.  The total federal
expenditure on the drug war this year under the proposed budget will
exceed $17 billion.  Ten years ago the annual expenditure on the drug
war was $5 billion for all governments, federal, state, and local.
While our expenditures have increased tenfold, the number of Americans
using drugs has remained relatively constant at 40 million.  Steady
users are estimated to be 6 million, with I to 2 million of those
seriously disordered.  Our present prohibition policy has failed,
flatly and without serious question.
Secondly, the rule of law has been debased by the use of criminal
sanctions to alter personal conduct.  Of course, the same effort was
made in the Twenties and Thirties with respect to alcohol, with the
same results.  Al Capone and Nicky Barnes are interchangeable.  Drive-
by shootings, turf wars, mugging, and random violence are all the
direct result of criminal prohibition.  Courts are clogged with drug
cases to such an extent that in some jurisdictions (the Eastern
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