Why Not Sell at the Local Pharmacy? : Drugs: Since stricter laws and tougher enforcement have not cleared the streets of addicts and pushers, it’s time to think seriously about legalization.

It was only 80 years ago, when Congress passed the Harrison Act, that drugs became illegal in this country. During America’s greatest period of greatest expansion, drugs were freely and legitimately obtainable. Opium balls were used to put crying babies to sleep; the corner pharmacy catered to any taste in what are now called controlled substances. The highest rate of addiction in American history was among Union troops during the Civil War.

Once narcotics were prohibited by a battery of increasingly stringent federal and state laws, the development of an enormously profitable black market in drugs became inevitable. The rate of addiction rose sharply, the result of both the forbidden-fruit effect and aggressive, highly motivated pushers. Today, by conservative estimates, we have at least 3 million Americans hopelessly hooked on heroin, cocaine, crack or hallucinogenics. Roughly 23 million Americans use some of these substances each month.

Drug-related crime is steadily increasing, including roughly 750 murders a year over turf disputes. Our courts stagger under the weight of 824,000 annual drug arrests, and our prisons are glutted with convicted offenders.

No current--or past--local or national policy has been able to stem this horrendous tide. From Nancy Reagan’s cruelly foolish slogan, “Just say no to drugs,” to the pyramiding of criminal sanctions, including even the death penalty, nothing has proved to be even slightly effective in either curbing addiction or preventing importation and sale.

In early 1988, Kurt Schmoke, a former federal prosecutor and the newly elected mayor of Baltimore, addressing a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, startled his audience by recommending that there be “a national debate about decriminalizing drugs.” Recently, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, now teaching economics at Stanford University, suggested that “we should at least be willing to debate (these) issues.” And this week, Robert W. Sweet, a federal judge in Manhattan and former assistant U.S. attorney, refocused attention on the issue when he called for the legalization of drugs.

Last February, a New York state senator, Joseph L. Galiber, introduced a drug-decriminalization bill loosely modeled after laws in effect in Great Britain for almost half a century. While it has no chance of passage, given the public’s current overwhelming antipathy to legalization, it deserves serious attention and consideration.

Under its provisions, a five-member Controlled Substance Authority would be created, with power to license physicians and pharmacists who met stringent qualification to sell drugs legally to persons older than 21. No licenses would be issued to applicants whose offices or places of business were within 200 feet of schools or houses of worship.

In introducing his bill, Galiber argued that “by decriminalizing the sale, possession and use of controlled substances, we won’t end the demand (for drugs), but we can take the huge profits out and remove the heinous criminal elements. Then we can attempt serious efforts in combating drugs through education and treatment.”

It is obviously impossible to predict whether the proponents of legalization are on the right track. But since criminalization has not worked, no matter how rigorous or harsh its enforcement, is it not time to accept the suggestion of Shultz and Sweet, among others, and initiate a national debate on the issue? Or shall we continue to treat drugs as a problem for the criminal-justice system rather than as a health question, with all the attendant misery, cost and futility, without even exploring what well might be a workable alternative? It simply makes no sense to keep knocking on a door that thus far has led to nowhere when there may be others that open onto more productive avenues.