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| - I want drug kingpins and their low-level stooges to have a really bad day. I want every wannabe "Scarface" currently slinging dime bags in a school cafeteria to suddenly discover that the underground economy isn't working for them anymore. With apologies to the late reggae singer Peter Tosh, I don't want to "advertise it" or "criticize it," but I do want to legalize it. And not just marijuana -- it's time for Americans to have a grown-up conversation about the so-called "war on drugs" while we still have some semblance of a Constitution. Imagine the panic of shady bankers who'll be forced to find other clients with illicit fortunes to launder once mid-level dealers are wiped out by legitimate businesses jockeying for a piece of the action. What would they do if Uncle Sam decided it was now in the country's best interests to drain the fetid swamp of the underground economy by legalizing and then slapping a sin tax on narcotics, like we do every other legal drug from alcohol to cigarettes? The day we grow up and treat drug addiction like a public health crisis -- instead of an opportunity to criminalize people and behavior we find distasteful -- will be the day our democracy takes a major step forward into political maturity. Politicians from all regions of the country who push prison construction as a de facto jobs program would be reduced to tears once we've finally adopted sensible drug laws. We won't need as many prison guards once we stop warehousing nonviolent drug offenders in federally subsidized tombs for decades at a time. Fortunes based on illicit drug profits would slip from the hands of cartel bosses faster than what happened to naive investors visiting Bernie Madoff's office. Joaquin Guzman will be the last Mexican drug lord to crack Forbes' list of billionaires if we have the courage to walk away from a ridiculous drug war that enriches criminals at the expense of society. Yesterday while writing this very column, a letter from the Drug Policy Alliance arrived in the mail. It contained a fundraising appeal from a longtime supporter: former CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite. "Uncle Walter," as he was affectionately known by all who watched him in the pre-Internet, pre-cable news age, was consistently voted the most trusted man in America during his tenure. This is an excerpt from his letter (which was first released in 2006): As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And that's the way it is." To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue. Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire -- least of all in a time of war. I remember. I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost -- and the shock when, 20 years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along. Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the War on Drugs. Folks of a certain age will recall that it was Walter Cronkite who declared the Vietnam War unwinnable after reporting the Tet Offensive. That was bad news for President Lyndon Johnson. "If I've lost Cronkite," Mr. Johnson said, "I've lost Middle America." No journalist working in the business today has anything near the moral authority Mr. Cronkite wielded at the height of his popularity. Still, you don't have to be the most revered newsman of your generation to see the hysteria and disregard for the truth that the war on drugs engenders. This war turns otherwise well-meaning people into liars and fuels a black market that thrives on fear, bloodshed and international bribery. The drug war is cut from the same cloth as Prohibition. The same anti-science mentality that fueled that moral panic provides the discredited logic of America's drug war. Every day, we see the distorting effects of our shortsighted drug laws. Our prisons are bulging with people who turned to the underground economy to satisfy the demand curve and make a fast buck. More than 2 million people -- the largest incarcerated population on the planet -- live behind American prison walls at taxpayer expense. A healthy percentage of those consigned to our jails and prisons are nonviolent drug offenders. Don't bother getting mad about AIG bonuses if you can't muster indignation at this waste of lives and tax dollars. And that's the way it is, America.
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