We hear bad news every day. We hear about an intolerable level of violence in our country. We hear that the economy is sick and the government is saddled with staggering debt. We hear more about police corruption because more cases are becoming known. We hear about violent criminals being let loose from prison because prisons are overflowing. We hear about states taking money away from schools and building prisons instead. We infer from all this that these evils are drug-related. And here we are correct; current drug laws and drug policy produce much evil. The drug waris the root cause of most of the bad things we hear on the news.

America has been waging a war on drugs for more than 80 years. Along the way certain administrations escalated hostilities. Richard Nixon significantly escalated the war and set it on its present catastrophic course. But Ronald Reagan launched the most dramatic escalation. Reagan militarized the police and unleashed Ninja-suited SWAT teams to break into homes with no-knock searches. Machine gun-toting police routinely jump out of helicopters and invade communities every year in marijuana-producing areas. We have even seen a growing number of cases where police have shot and killed innocent property owners for the sole reason of confiscating their valuables. Looting is a predictable activity in war — and the drug war, whatever its ostensible intentions, is no different. War has turned some police departments into modern-day Visigoths who sack private property and loot people's valuables. This is not a suitable role for the police, and an increasing number of police officials object to being forced into such a role.

Opposition to the drug war is growing because the war drags on and it is dragging the country down with it. Over the last 30 years of emergency there is no noticeable decrease in drug use and no appreciable decline in the importation of banned drugs. If anything, the drug war has increased use and distribution by pumping money into criminal enterprises. Opposition to the drug war now comes from both sides of the political fence; conservatives and liberals alike urge an end to hostilities and the beginning of a drug armistice. The drug war is corrupt, amazingly expensive and counterproductive.

In October 1995, William E Buckley Jr. summed up the catastrophic effects of the drug war to New York City's Bar Association. Buckley emphasized that the "plague" is not drugs but drug laws. Buckley said in part: "We are speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year in public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 percent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 percent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen...."

Buckley also warned of additional costs to the drug war besides the $200 billion or so that's spent outright. These costs are the result of "astonishing legal weapons," (Buckley said), that are now "available ... to policemen and prosecutors." The so-called zero-tolerance laws, for example, represent an immeasurable cost to society. Most disturbing is that the "astonishing legal weapons" directly threaten innocent, law-abiding people who have nothing at all to do with drugs. Mr. Buckley put it like this: they threaten "the penalty of forfeiture of one's home and property for violation of laws which, though designed to advance the war against drugs, could legally be used ... as penalties for the neglect of one's pets."

In pursuing the drug war, the government has become the partner of criminal drug business people. The government's war against drugs supports drug cartels and protects cartel interests. The drug war insures that drug cartels and only drug cartels conduct the drug trade. Drug cartels are protected despite the show arrests of individual executives. The government even forms partnerships with individual drug traffickers. Successful traffickers routinely pay the government money, trade valuable goods, or provide information to be let free from arrest. Drug traffickers who are not successful do not qualify for this privileged partnership. But the rich ones work with the government as partners.

The drug war also subsidizes domestic drug production. The drug war embargoes foreign imports of, especially, marijuana. This trade policy created a gigantic domestic production of marijuana that did not exist prior to President Nixon's initial escalation. Despite all the ballyhoo of arrests, confiscations and seizures it is widely acknowledged that interdiction of drugs barely amounts to one percent of all drug imports. Ninety-nine percent of smuggling attempts work; the drug war thus insures that crime pays.

The drug war has inexorably led to a race war. African-Americans account for 12 percent of the American population, but 74 percent of all prison sentences for drug possession. Most drug users are white. This inequality is undeniable and outrageous. The racist character of the drug war is yet another horror of this war and more evidence that the war itself is an abomination.

Prohibitionists claim that drugs are killing Americans. True, some Americans do die after using prohibited drugs, but the number is surprisingly small, fewer than 7,000 a year (that's about one in every 37,000 Americans). Seven thousand deaths is obviously too many and should be eliminated, but that number of deaths cannot by any stretch of the imagination justify spending many hundreds of billions of dollars in a war. This is especially true since drug problems are medical problems and can be handled inexpensively with proven methods of therapy by neighborhood physicians. Drug addiction is not a mysterious ailment. Care and treatment of drug addicts is a matter for any licensed M.D. or rehabilitative center.

Step back and consider all the outrages. The war against drugs is racist; it promotes, protects and cooperates with large criminal enterprises; it is morally and financially bankrupt; it threatens innocent citizens; it is an assault on civil rights, free- dom and private property; it corrupts law enforcement; it promotes foreign military adventures that sacrifice armed forces personnel; and it clogs the criminal justice system and perverts the spirit of the law. The most frightening aspect of this catalog of disgrace is that prohibitionists know that the war is wrong. How could they not know? And yet, some people still vote for more war and continued outrages. Prohibitionists perpetuate scores of years of wrongheadedness, including the last 26 years of extreme emergency, knowing that war has not stopped drug use and that the war does more harm than good.

Prohibition does not work. Control, regulation and medical care do work. This is hardly a new idea, and I'm not just referring to the prohibition against alcohol from 1920 to 1933. Abraham Lincoln recognized the futility of prohibition in 1840. On December 18, 1840, Lincoln warned the Illinois House of Representatives: "Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Today, 156 years later, more and more people agree with Abraham Lincoln. Prohibition "goes beyond the bounds of reason." It also extracts a nauseating and unnecessary toll of blood and fortune by making "a crime out of things that are not crimes." The drug war will eventually end and a drug armistice will take its place. How soon this will happen is difficult to tell, but happen it will, because the drug war, as Lincoln recognized, "strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Hugh Downs is the anchor of ABC News' 20/20 and a veteran reporter Downs won DPF's 1996 Edward Brecher for Achievement in the Field of journalism. These articles are from Mr Down's series of radio perspectives. The first was delivered on Feb. 29, 1996, and the second on Aug. 28, 1995.