LEGALIZING DRUG USE IS NOT IN THE INTEREST OF AMERICA

A firestorm of controversy enveloped U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders in recent weeks with her assessment that legalization of many drugs now illegal might be a viable consideration in curtailing the crime problem in this nation. Our concern is not with her joining a national debate by supplying an off-beat idea, though the off-handedness of her offering was disconcerting. Rather, we have trouble with the idea itself. Legalizing drug use is not in the best interest of America.

The surgeon general is not the first American public figure to suggest America could cut its losses by lifting the laws that ban the likes to cocaine, crack and heroin. A movement to legalize marijuana has been around for years, and an organization on the local university campus is even dedicated to that purpose. Commentators such as William F. Buckley, who is hardly a radical, have discussed the advantages that might come from disposing of the prohibition on these substances.

While Surgeon General Elders did not offer any elaboration on her statement (she admitted having no evidence such an action would be effective), others have reached such conclusions by weighing the cost of enforcing these laws and their effectiveness with the ancillary crimes perpetrated on non-users of drugs and the other demands on public resources. But what kind of calculation is this? How do you provide a cost-benefit ratio on misery inflicted on American families? How do you quantify human suffering that drugs ultimately arouse? The fact is that some drugs, put on the open market, would harm greatly the structure of our society, would chip away at the greatest resource of this nation: the people.

The argument goes America once attempted the prohibition of alcohol and that proved a miserable failure. This nation also allows the free sale of tobacco while the federal government acknowledges the extensive harm it can do to people. Any individual can consume sugar, salt and fatty foods to an extreme that will do great bodily harm ... it's all perfectly legal. But these comparisons are misplaced when it comes to drugs. You don't drink one beer, smoke one cigarette or eat one piece of fatty meat and become immediately in need of more. With crack, the highly addictive derivative of cocaine that has made its presence known in Cape Girardeau and neighboring communities, that is essentially the case. And while alcohol and tobacco can be ultimately addictive, their negative effects usually make themselves known after long periods of abuse; with heroin and cocaine, the slide into personal health problems is precipitous.

In other terms, the suggestion of legalizing drugs is a distinctly un-American solution to a problem: It says, when the going gets tough, the supposedly tough give in. It extends the logic that crime would not be such a problem if there were fewer acts called crimes. It says to young people that difficult situations in life are never to be addressed but acceded to.

Cape Girardeau has joined the battle against illegal drugs. Like the more sweeping battle at the national and international levels, the problem is mighty and the successes are small. Still, throwing in the towel seems premature. The word in the schools, the word in the homes and the word on the street is beginning, slowly, to sound familiar: drugs are bad. With due respect to the surgeon general's right to bring up the subject (though we wish she were better prepared before making such pronouncements), we believe the legalization of drugs would be a killing consideration the national discussion about crime.