The nation's war is a root cause of the anger and alienation that erupted into the recent riots in Los Angeles.

It is a cause for two reasons. First, drug prohibition and its enforcement create a black market that serves as a highly lucrative reward system for those able and willing to be violent. The violence then infects the poorest neighborhoods where black markets thrive.

Secondly, by focusinglaw enforcement resources on drug violations, the criminal justice system has become overwhelmed so that it can no longer effectively respond to predatory crimes.

The net result: the streets are not safe in inner city neighborhoods throughout the country. Absent a basic level of personal safety, the social and economic order breaks down. Capital is withdrawn, jobs are lost. Those with a choice, leave. The neighborhoods no longer functionas decent places in which people can live.

Across the political spectrum, from conservative to liberal, most would agree that a fundamental duty of government is to provide its citizens with personal safety. When people leave their homes they should not have to worry about whether they will return unharmed.

Inner city progress is absolutely dependent on making the streets safe. Not safer, but truly safe.

Who can believe that Jack Kemp's Enterprise Zones will work, even if passed by Congress and signed by the President, if the neighborhoods remain unsafe. They won't.

Who can believe that the schools can be effective educators, so long as they are located in free-fire zones? They can't.

Who can believe that capital will be allocated to neighborhoods to renovate existing buildings and build new housing if basic safety is not present? It won't.

All the programs to improve education? Jobs, housing and health care for inner city neighborhoods will be but marginally effective, unless the streets are safe.

During the last fifteen years, as the war against drugs has intensified, this fundamental duty of government to provide inner city citizens with basic safety has been increasingly unfulfilled. The relationship suggested here is not coincidental; it is inherent in the logic of the drug wars.

Here is what happens. Drug prohibition combined with a strong demand for the prohibited substances generates a lucrative black market. In the United States this black market amounts to $40 billion annually in retail sales)

This black market is characterized by violence, because all disputes must be resolved through force. Further, there is an arms race fueled by the financial incentive to maintain and expand one's position with increasing firepower.

The illegal markets gravitate to the poorest neighborhoods, where there is desperation and poverty and lack of other opportunity — and therefore where a rational decision can be made to assume the risks of participating in the black market.

Drug dealing inserts into these areas, levels of violence that affect the entire social order. It is as if a teaspoon of red ink were put in ajar of clear water—the water becomes pink, its essence is transformed, just as violence by a few creates fear and colors all experience in a neighborhood.

It also creates rage and levels of deep-seated self-hatred, because by its nature the violence is turned on itself. Brother must kill brother as the logic unfolds; young black men express openly their expectation that they will be dead before they are 25. Their mothers buy insurance for their funerals. And they don't expect to be killed by a white man or the police, they expect to be killed by another black man. From the volcanic depths of this despair come the lyrics of angry rap music.

These points are underscored by the fact that what is commonly understood as "drug violence" is largely violence that emanates from drug dealing, and affects those involved in the trade. It is important to distinguish this from the effects of drug use, or from problems arising from, for instance, stealing to get money to buy drugs.

In a study of h omicides in New York City by Paul J. Goldstein, Patrick J. Ryan and others, the authors evaluated 414 homicides during an eight month period in 1988; Fifty-three percent (218 murders), were categorized as drug related. Of the 218, 74 percent (162 murders) were involved with dealing. Only eight were a result of efforts at theft to finance the purchase of drugs, thirty-one were a result of being intoxicated — but of the 31, 20 involved alcohol, not illegal drugs.2

This study provides empirical evidence that it is the dealing, the black market, not the use of illegal drugs, that generates violence in the inner cities.

Drugs pose a difficult problem for law enforcement. The criminal activity that is proscribed, dealing and possessing drugs, is voluntary. None of the participants consider themselves victims. Thus there is no one to complain to the police, and absent pressure and a deal for a reduced sentence, the participants will not testify against each other.

Unlike an assault, a burglary, a rape, or a stolen car, all of which are predatory crimes with victims, no one is injured by the illegal act of buying or selling drugs.

Ultimately, of course, those who take drugs often do become victims, and are hurt. But they are harmed by their own actions. They may lose their judgement and make bad decisions. The purpose of the drug laws is to protect these people from themselves, and to protect their families and society from their actions. But an enormous price is paid for pursuing this laudable goal.

A big part of the price is a dysfunctional criminal justice system. The effort to incarcerate those who participate in these voluntary activities has overwhelmed the courts and prisons.

Prisons are full. The number of those incarcerated has doubled in the last 10 years. Half those in federal prisons are there on drug charges. Fully 33 percent of all felony convictions in state courts in 1988 were on drug charges. This was up from 25 percent in 1986.3 Because of overcrowding, many offenders are released without jail time to ineffective probation programs.

Mandatory drug sentences require prison beds. With space in short supply, this means that many guilty of horrific predatory crimes must be released early to make room. The result is that the average sentence served by a murderer is now only six and a half years. Yet possession of quantities of marijuana for a first offender requires an eight year, no parole, sentence.4

In Washington, D.C., a recent report found that on any one day in 1991 fully 42 percent of the black males between the ages of 18 and 35 were involved with the criminal justice system.2 Despite this success in apprehending nearly half the black male population of Washington, the streets are even more dangerous than five years ago, and the amount of drug usage has not diminished.

The more that young black men are removed from the streets, involved with the law and the less they are able to encounter society in productive ways, to accept responsibility for family obligations, to become, in William Julius Wilson's word, "marriageable." Thus the enforcement of drug prohibition contributes to the breakdown of black family life.

Ironically, the more the police are successful in apprehending dealers, the more profitable it makes the trade for those left, and the more attractive to those willing to get into the trade. Success in carrying out this policy increases the incentive to practice violence.

Further, the effect of allocating resources to the enforcement of drug prohibition has been to diminish the ability of the police to deal with the predatory crimes that make neighborhoods dangerous.

However, the war on drugs is notjust an enforcement war. There are also efforts to reduce the demand for illegal drugs. These include programs of treatment, prevention, anti-advertising and education. Imagine that this effort was able to reduce demand by 25 percent, as measured by a reduction in the street value of the retail trade. Keep in mind that years of effort have made only nominal strides in this direction, at best changing demand by a few percentage points. So a 25 percent reduction would be regarded as a remarkable success.

Then ask yourself— would $30 billion of retail sales stimulate a black market characterized by violence? Would $30 billion be enough to recruit new dealers to come forward to replace those put in jail or killed in the line of work? Would $30 billion be enough to finance an arms race?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then even if the demand for illegal drugs were reduced by 25 percent, it is most likely that the streets would still not be safe, the prisons would still be overcrowded, and predatory inner city crimes would still not be dealt with effectively. There would continue to be a loss of respect for the law, deterrence would be absent.

In other words, a successful prosecution of the war on drugs will not result in safe streets. It will, instead, guarantee that the streets of our poorest neighborhoods remain highly dangerous. It will continue to incarcerate disproportionate proportions of young black men.

And, the following conclusion is hard to avoid: A continuation of the war on drugs is not consistent with making fundamental progress in resolving the conditions that led to the riots in Los Angeles.

What Should Be Done?

First, a thoughtful, careful, in depth review of all our drug policies should be undertaken. Ways must be found to regulate, rather than prohibit, to treat drug use as a health and mental health problem, not a criminal problem. The objective should be to dramatically reduce the violence stemming from illegal drug markets.

Secondly, the resources of the criminal justice system should be redeployed. From the cop on the beat to the, courts and the prisons, the focus should be aimed at preventing and punishing the predatory crimes that are making the streets unsafe in poor communities.

The goal should be safe streets. With safe streets, people can plan ahead, make sacrifices and pursue the American Dream the traditional way. If neighborhoods are safe it won't take special government programs to stimulate economic activity; capital will flow efficiently to the opportunities.

The war on drugs condemns those in the inner cities to lives of danger, to a social order that does not work, and to anger at injustice and exclusion from the American Dream.

Edward C. Carman Jr. is an urban development expert.
103 Lake Shore Road, Brighton, Mass. 02135.

Endnotes

1 Office of National Drug Control Policy, "What America's Users Spend on Illegal Drugs," Technical Paper, June 1991, pages 3-4.

2 Goldstein, Paul J, Patrick J. Ryan, et. al., "Crack and Homicide in New York City, 1988: a Conceptually Based Event Analysis,' Contemporary Drug Problems, Winter 1989, pages 651-687.
3 Associated Press, Boston Globe, Dec. 17, 1990.

4 The New Yorker, Notes and Comment, April 13, 1992, p. 27.

5 The National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, as reported in The Boston Globe, April 19, 1992.