This is an excerpt of a New York Times editorial that was published on Saturday:

ALMOST 70 years after the failure of Prohibition, the much-trumpeted "war on drugs," begun more than a decade ago, has hugely misfired.

The drug war was created in reaction to a wave of urban violence triggered by crack cocaine that ignited fears that crack addiction might spread widely. Surveys now show, however, that the use of crack, by about 600,000 people annually, has not changed in 10 years. Nor has the general level of illegal drug use.

The best hope for controlling illicit drugs lies in treatment. Unfortunately, as new prisons have gone up, treatment programs within them have declined. In their obsession to control drug use by making war on it, federal and state legislators have turned the world's greatest democracy into its largest prison system, where young adults are warehoused and the opportunity to treat them is wasted.

Pub Date: 3/16/99