MEDIA

It's time for someone to step forward as the Walter Cronkite of the drug war

I USED TO HATE hearing about the "war" against drugs, and as executive editor tried to discourage that metaphor in the New York Times. But the politicians won the battle of the cliché even as they were losing the war. The "war" term appeared in the Times only 16 times in all of 1981, but 66 times in 1987 and 511 times in 1989, after President Bush promised at his inaugural, "Take my word for it, this scourge will stop." Well, it didn't, and we're down to about 100 mentions in each of the Clinton years, a mere twice a week. And now I'm sorry, for it's time the media began to cover the war on drugs as a war — the way they covered the last war that America lost.

The better newspapers are portraying the drug quagmire the way they once portrayed the quagmire in Vietnam. Dispatches from the front find cops risking life and limb to drag in users and dealers, but just as many stalk the streets the next night. The brass that's bragging about progress and calling for still more troops, weapons, prisons and money must be smoking something.

If the newspapers, magazines and TV networks would agree that there's a war on, maybe they would report a monthly "bag count" — the number of kilo-size packs of cocaine or heroin seized by federal, state and local raiders in urban hideaways, remote marinas and canine stomachs. They could point out that the bag count, much like the Vietnam body count, is a meaningless index of progress in the war; no matter how impressive the seizures, the flow of bags in the underground drug channels continues relentlessly.

The press has been too generous with pictures of prosecutors and politicians posing with the mounds of heroin and cocaine they've stumbled across somewhere. If more of the media would open drug-war bureaus in the inner cities, their bravest reporters would find that there's no shortage anytime, no increase at all in the street price of drugs, just constant pressure by a guerrilla army of street pushers supporting their own drug habit by enlarging the circle of customers. The reporters would document the cost and futility of the pursuit, the cynicism and corruption of the pursuers and the serene confidence of a wealthy enemy.

GRADUALLY, MAYBE THROUGH C-SPAN "teach-ins" run by such radicals as former Secretary of State George Shultz, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke of Baltimore and William F. Buckley Jr., the commercial networks might learn that the war on drugs — meaning the prohibition of drugs — is not only being lost but is also unwinnable. The radicals have adopted the anti-war slogan of "legalization," but the TV anchors don't have to embrace that still-undefined remedy. They need only climb to the rooftops of Washington Heights in New York and cruise down along the Potomac Delta while reciting the terrifying findings of their research staffs: The direct, recognizable cost of this war is probably running in excess of $100 billion a year. There's not even a good estimate of the cost of the related crimes committed by drug peddlers and users, and of the measures taken to prevent such crimes, to compensate the victims and to punish some of the perpetrators. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being stashed in offshore sanctuaries and hundreds of millions more are available to import the stuff and pave the way with bribes and untaxed wages.

Of the 20 million American drug users, maybe 5 million are "seriously" addicted. A year's supply of heroin for all of them can be made from opium poppies grown on only 20 square mile...s of land — not quite the area of Manhattan. A year's supply of coke can be stashed in 13 truck trailers. So "eradicating" the supply abroad is impossible; "interdicting" drugs at the border is a joke.

About 40,000 Americans die each year from the direct and indirect effects of drugs; a large proportion of New York City's 2,000 annual homicides are attributable to drug trafficking. And drug offenders, whether or not they are violent criminals, clog the courts and prisons.

When finally one of the TV anchors senses that the country is ready to hear unvarnished truth, like Walter Cronkite's passionate declaration in 1968 that it was time to get out of Vietnam, she won't have to bother with statistics. Against a backdrop of gripping graphics, she could simply list the war's consequences:

•    Urban blight, fear and destruction.
•    Neighborhood turf wars and shoot-outs.
•    Family ruin, school failure and wreckage.
•    Lost productivity in the economy.
•    Crack babies, kids dealing drugs, addicts felled by AIDS.
•    Cops corrupted. Courts and prisons overwhelmed.
•    Murder and mayhem near the top in Mexico, Colombia and other countries that cannot resist supplying the rich American market. And in America, contempt for government — and despair.

IF THE PROHIBITION of drugs is a lost cause then "legalization" — in some form — is inevitable. But the word "legalization" has been demonized, like "negotiation" before Henry Kissinger sat down with the Vietcong in Paris. A year ago, Surgeon General Joycelyn
Elders was pilloried — and disowned by her president— for recommending "some studies" of how drugs might be legalized and regulated. Most Americans still think legalization would constitute "surrender" to immorality. Some call it "genocide" because they imagine ghetto children lining up at the corner drugstore for their daily fix.

Not until we in the media do a better job of reporting the horrendous costs of this unwinnable war will the public consider alternative policies. By definition, legalizing drugs would put the big dealers and their gun-toting distributors out of business. It would also keep most users from having to steal to support their habit. That alone would liberate a great deal of money and energy for reclaiming wrecked lives and neighborhoods.

Like the Surgeon General, I don't pretend to know how a legal drug trade might be managed. Maybe drugs should be sold inexpensively to adults through government outlets, like the ABC liquor stores that many states opened after Prohibition. Maybe drugs should be given away at neighborhood dispensaries that also offer treatment to cure addiction. Maybe dozens of experiments are in order. By all means, let's call it "war." Then deal with defeat.

Max Frankel has worked with the New York Times since 1952. He was executive editor of the paper from 1986 to 1994. This article originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine December 18, 1994, and is copyright 1994, Max Frankel. The adjoining article appeared in the same publication January 29, 1995, Under the title, "Drug War, II," and is copyright 1995, Max Frankel. Reprinted with permission from the New York Times Magazine.