In the headlines recently was the story of a gun battle south of Nogales, Mexico. The story recounted that innocent people were shot in a battle between rival drug and smuggling. Another story in another publication told of a Jamaican drug lord who had been brought to New York after 73 people died trying to protect him from extradition. In our world today these are not unusual stories. Over and over we read about the casualties of so-called "drug wars".

These kinds of stories always bring a cry from politicians for more enforcement. Another political group will cry out for tougher laws on drug smugglers and drug dealers. Somehow this approach has never worked. Since I was a boy in the 1950s these kinds of stories have appeared over and over.

Yet drugs are readily available in any city in our country. That's why we should legalize drugs as soon as possible.

Good, law-abiding citizen blanch at the idea of legalizing drugs. They say that legalization will encourage more people to use drugs. But that's a myth. In countries that have partial or full legalization there are fewer drug users than there are here in the United States. What many people don't seem to realize, is that our country has de facto legalization as it is. There never seems to be a shortage of drugs in our neighborhoods or cities. One just has to ask a few questions and he can find drugs in any town.

So if drugs are readily available, anyway, what would it hurt if we legalize them? If we made good clean drugs readily available one important thing would happen immediately. The murderous criminal drug cartels that thrive South of our border would have to find new markets for their poison. There would be no point in buying their adulterated product when safe clean drugs were available here in our country.

Another immediate benefit would be a reduction in the cost of law enforcement. Vast sums are spent policing drug traffic. Besides saving money on enforcement, our country would save money on the cost of prosecuting and warehousing drug offenders. Now many people don't see that as a good thing because all of a sudden many people would be out of work. But there is an upside to all of this. The money that had previously been spent on enforcement could be directed toward treatment.

Because I manage one of the larger recovery programs in the United States, many people might find my view hypocritical. But I don't view the problem as the easy availability of drugs. I view the problem has been the fact some people suffer from deadly addictions. One way or the other, addicts and alcoholics find a way to feed their disease. Availability is not the key factor.

It is time that to overhaul our counterproductive drug laws. In 50 years the situation has not gotten better. How can we not recognize that enforcement isn't working? Our so-called drug problem has remained static all that time.

By treating addiction as a crime - rather than a disease - we've created a criminal subculture. Many of its inhabitants live a dubious existence in the lower tier of our society.