SOUNDING OFF:

Few politicians would think of advocating a pragmatic approach to fighting drug use and drug abuse. It is common knowledge that America’s so-called war on drugs wastes vast resources: time, money and lives. Little that is new and daring is ever proposed by major leaders at any level of government.

Judging by the length of our war on drugs and its unhappy history, effectiveness is not a criteria in determining our approach or our methods.

Politicians outright quake at the prospect of criticizing any aspect of the accepted war on drugs — from the local to the international scene.

We continue to overcrowd our prisons with drug offenders of all kinds.

Of the 2.3 million prison population in the United States, making up the highest rate of imprisonment of any country, more than 33% are drug offenders. Almost 48% of all drug arrests in 2007 were for marijuana offenses. Most drug offenders in prison are users not sellers. And more than half never had a history of violence or of any significant selling activity.

Over the past two decades, we have been incarcerating more and more people for nonviolent crimes and for acts that are driven by mental illness or drug dependence.

Politicians won’t tell you that all of this has done nothing to break up the power of the multi-billion-dollar illegal drug trade. Dangerous gangs supported by drugs still besiege our towns and our cities.

Mexican drug cartels, whose combined profits are estimated at more than $25 billion, are terrorizing Mexican citizens and even American authorities. Their activities are spilling over into American cities. Phoenix, for one, has become the kidnapping capital of the United States, with more than 370 cases in 2008. That is more than any other city in the world, except for Mexico City.

Mexican cartels are now reported to be running operations in some 230 American cities. And cities in other countries have been permeated as well.

A few American leaders have taken notice. U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Virginia) has called for creating a national commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom.

Webb has called for new ideas, questioning America’s high incarceration rate for drug offenses, the huge cost of the drug war, mental illness treatment, and drug abuse treatment and prevention programs.

At the state level, there are isolated instances of drug reform measures. In California, a bill introduced last month by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), calls for marijuana to be regulated and taxed much like alcohol. His ideas have brought little interest or support.

There are some studies but not much attention given to alternative programs. The priorities and the focus seem to be more self-serving on the part of leadership, and narcissistic on the part of the populace. The compromised politician, in their bid for election or reelection, pacifies constituents, punching the buttons of fear, security, property values and complacency.

Get drug pushers off the streets. Be tough on all crime. Save our children from even the hint of ugliness. Politicians continue to fear embarking on the new and the pragmatic.

So we sustain the same tragic problems in our society, hiding the problem of mental illness and drug dependency and simulating order: It’s prison time over rehab, the continuing show of police resources to fight drugs, the same get-tough resolutions by leadership and the same problems.

It is like reaching for the same familiar whip to ceremonially beat a wayward dog — to display order and discipline. Never mind the cause for misbehavior or the lack of results. In this manner we simulate resolve — and action — thus hiding the real problem.

JIM HOOVER lives in Huntington Beach.