In his first-ever tour of American inner cities, President George Bush is clinging to a major myth of urban policy that was demolished by the Los Angeles riots. The myth is that drugs are the chief threat to minority communities, when in fact poverty, unemployment, violence, racism and injustice have shown themselves to be the dominant ills of our cities.

Promising relief for these ravaged areas, the President has revived his forgotten drug war and made it a major component of his plan to save the cities. Unfortunately, the President does not see that the drug crackdown of the 1980s and early 1990s exacerbated nearly all the problems of minority communities, and he is poised to make a bad situation worse.

President Bush's top proposal in his "Program for a New America" is his so-called "Weed and Seed" program, which aims to "weed out" drug dealers and then "seed" the inner cities with investment and new businesses. As a not-so-impressively new twist on his war on drugs, this program is bound only to increase tensions in minority communities and continue the horrific guerrilla war our national drug policy has spurred over the last decade.

Rather than "weed and seed," the cities need "peace and seed," a real commitment to constructive, non-belligerent urban policies that recognize the errors of the 1980s and early 1990s. This country cannot have a war on drugs and peace in the cities at the same time.

Levels of violence have exploded under the Bush drug war. Before the president took office in January 1989, Washington, D.C., had just set a new one-year murder record of 369 in 1988. In 1991, the District saw 489 murders and the national total broke 24,000 for the first time in history. Drug trade-related murders do not account for all of this violence, but they help explain the increase in murder rates over the last decade, much as alcohol Prohibition added to the rate of killings in the 1920s.

In trying to get the upper hand against drug-related crime, police in most major cities have turned to paramilitary tactics. This is particularly true in Los Angeles, where Police Chief Daryl Gates has been a pioneer of ruthless new drug war measures. Gates was the first to use converted army tanks to crush suspected crack houses, for example, and he encouraged the cordoning off of neighborhoods where drugs were being sold. The chief also told Congress he thought casual drug users ought to be "taken out and shot." Such blood-and-guts rhetoric from the general had its impact on his front-line troops.

Though residents of neighborhoods with high levels of violence and open drug dealing surely appreciate the protection offered by police, they feel the negative repercussions of the police presence as well. No single issue has contributed more to the poisoning of relations between police and the black community than drug enforcement.

Because it is difficult to tell who is a dealer and who is not, innocent, law-abiding citizens are regularly harassed by police searching for drugs. This unfortunate side effect of increased drug enforcement occurs in all U.S. cities. Police departments nationwide use "drug courier profiles" to justify searches of suspected dealers and traffickers.

The profiles are profoundly race-related, with blacks and Hispanics targeted regardless of class. Black and Hispanic men can be pulled over whether they are driving a nice car — suggesting drug profits — or a beat-up old car— suggesting a sleazy individual looking to make a few bucks on a drug delivery. Even perfectly honest people soon come to view their would-be protectors as oppressors.

In addition to encouraging racist attitudes among police officers, the drug war has led to disproportionate arrest levels for minorities. Literally hundreds of thousands of people are rounded up every year in drug raids in minority communities. Increased use of harsh mandatory minimum penalties since the late 1980s has put thousands of these nickel-and-dime dealers and users behind bars for sentences of five years to 20 years and more.

The results are in:

• Nearly half the current prison population is black, despite the fact that blacks make up only about 15 percent of all drug users and just over 12 percent of the general population.

•    Nationally, one in four young black men is already in jail, on parole or otherwise under the supervision of the criminal justice system.

•    The United States has the highest per capita imprisonment rate in the Western world.

•    A recent report on black men in Washington, D.C., aptly entitled "Hobbling a Generation," offered this shocking statistic: "the lifetime risk of arrest for an African-American male residing in D.C. approaches the 90th percentile."

While this nation is incarcerating massive numbers of young black men, national leaders complain that the black family is disintegrating and that too many children are raised without fathers. Can these leaders not see the connection to the drug war's heavy enforcement focus?

What is worse is that while police have been trying to enforce the unenforceable drug laws, they have left many kinds of one-on-one crimes unpunished.'"Police preoccupied with trying to curtail the drug trade simply cannot offer the kind of protection law-abiding citizens deserve.

On top of all these negative impacts, the president's drug war has failed to control drug abuse. Recent government figures show that the types of drug use of most dire concern —frequent cocaine and heroin use — are increasing again after a period of decline. Weekly cocaine use went up 18 percent in the most recent government survey while monthly use increased 29 percent. Emergency room episodes related to hardcore drug abuse have returned to the levels they were at when President Bush took office.

It is time to declare a truce in the drug war. That may not mean legalizing drugs for now, but it should mean declaring a moratorium on prosecutions of smalltime dealers and drug users. The alternative is what the president is proposing: more roundups, more crackdowns, more prisoners and more violence.

State and federal prisons are already overflowing with drug offenders, and it ought to be clear that locking up more will not dent the drug trade. The premise of "weed and seed"— that all drug dealers can be found and "weeded out" without being replaced immediately — is absurd on its face and has been proved wrong by the last decade's experience.

Mr. Bush should realize that war is not a domestic policy. His drug war has failed him thus far and it will continue to fail him if he relies on it to help bring peace and prosperity to the cities.

Reprinted from "The Drug Policy Letter," Spring/Summer 1992.

References

National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, 635 Slaters Lane, Suite G-100, Alexandria, Va. 22314. (703) 684-0373. Jerome G. Miller, executive director.

Sentencing Project, 918 F St., N.W., Suite 501, Washington, D.C. 20004. (202) 628-1091. Marc Mauer, assistant director.