Making us safe from the harm of drugs systematically made us less safe, to the point today where we are the least safe. And tomorrow will only be worse. Our drug policy has fostered a lack of respect for others and their property, both tenets of normative behavior absolutely essential for public safety. Our prisons are not only overcrowded with drug offenders, they are overrun with drugs as well. Tell me it's not all insane. Then tell me I'm insane to believe repealing drug prohibition will be the most significant law and order legislation of the 21st century.

The United States led the world into drug prohibition, and it is the United States that can lead us all out. Some believe legalization will turn America into the world's magnet for drug users. And it just might. But not for long. Removing the United States from the black market in drugs will shrink the traffickers' pie to crumbs, forcing them to greatly intensify efforts elsewhere. Bet on it getting ugly very quickly. And that most countries will follow our enlightened lead, some even questioning why it took so long.

It's the old "think globally, act locally" scenario. So let's think globally for a minute. All the world's cocaine comes from South America, where guerilla armies and cartels control production and distribution. America consumes 85% of their product, creating a yearly cash flow of over a hundred billion dollars, financing an awful lot of mortars and mansions. When U.S. legalization pinches that nerve, watch how fast they get spastic. And when they're still twitching, exposed and weak, watch how fast the rest of the world joins the kill. It will be instinctive.

Heroin is different, in that America consumes just 5% of global production. Even though we pay heroin's highest price, eliminating our black market will not change the global dynamics of heroin. The renegade military generals, drug lords and warlords running the trade will remain in business and unwilling to go away quietly. They can only be defeated when made irrelevant, something easily accomplished through the global legalization of morphine. And if you think that sounds crazy, then go find me the addict who will risk buying impure heroin at high prices from criminals when given the option of pure morphine on the cheap from corner drugstores. Really, go look. But pack a lunch.

The global trafficking in cocaine and heroin is unquestionably the most violent sector of the black market, due to the sheer enormity of profits. Territory is hard won and defended to the death. Killing is a job description, and assassination an occupational hazard. So it is both foolish and naïve to believe enacting the death penalty against drug dealers, an option more frequently discussed these days, will act as a deterrent. It will only ratchet up their violence, eliminating what little else they have to lose. Global legalization is the only way to end the carnage.

Global legalization is not the magic bullet, but it is a magic wand. Wave it over the world and watch whole societies stabilize. The quiet desperation of drug addiction will remain, but black market violence will disappear. So will all the official corruption, much to the chagrin of all corrupt officials. Global law enforcement will better protect and serve, chasing the real bad guys and catching more of them. And the world will be a healthier place: injecting drugs with clean needles will slow the spread of HIV/AIDS faster than any cocktail on the pharmaceutical drawing board. What's not to like?

The messenger, perhaps. There will be those who dismiss my global perspective as the ranting of a man deranged by thirty-plus years of taking drugs. Fair enough. But what about men like George Shultz, secretary of state for Ronald Reagan, or Walter Cronkite, long considered "America's most trusted man," or good old Milton Friedman, recipient of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economics? Are they deranged? Because they're all singing pretty much the same tune: in a public letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, those three distinguished men, along with 500 other world luminaries, called for a far more sane and humane approach to the global drug crisis.

The letter was written June 1, 1998, a week before the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs convened in New York, and sought Kofi Annan's leadership in stimulating a "frank and honest" assessment of global drug control efforts. In it, the signatories add just one caveat: in order to be frank and honest, the United Nations must be willing to address tough questions as to the success or failure of its past efforts. Efforts the letter sum up in a dramatic one-sentence paragraph: "We believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself."

They support this position by pointing out that every decade the United Nations adopts new global drug policies focused mainly on criminalization and punishment, restricting individual countries from devising effective solutions to local problems. This forces world governments every year to enact more punitive and more costly drug control measures, leading politicians every day to endorse even deadlier drug war strategies. And their evidence is pretty convincing, some of which the United Nations supplied.

U.N. agencies estimate the annual revenue generated by the illegal drug industry at nearly four hundred billion dollars, or the equivalent of roughly 8% of total international trade. As a result, the letter states, this drug industry has "empowered organized crime, corrupted governments at all levels, eroded international security, stimulated violence, and distorted both economic markets and moral values." And they make clear this is the consequence of failed drug war policies, not drug use per se.

In addition, they fault drug war politics for impeding world health initiatives, for defoliating the environment and violating human rights, all in the delusional attempt to create drug-free societies. They warn Secretary-General Annan of more drugs, more drug crime, more disease and suffering should the world stay the course. They ask he stand tall against those who will accuse him of "surrendering," labeling true surrender as when fear and rigidity combine to kill all debate, discredit all critics and dismiss any alternative offered.

It would seem to even the casual reader of the letter that global drug prohibition has been a huge and utter failure, a social experiment long passed its expiration date. And that only a global policy of legalization will lead us away from our madness. Okay, they don't actually use the word "legalization," a word George Shultz once wryly noted as one that turns global drug warriors deaf and dumber. But they do call for a global drug policy to "reduce the harms associated with drugs," a new policy in which "fear, prejudice and punitive prohibitions yield to common sense, science, public health and human rights." Smells like legalization to me. Take a whiff yourself: www.lindesmith.org/news/un.html

The only problem I have with the letter is that it was sent to Kofi Annan. This was a man up to his whiskers in weasels, doing lunch with Saddam Hussein and the bidding for Yasir Arafat, all the while granting repressive states like Syria a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission. I mean, come on. This is not exactly the guy you want downfield when you throw humanity's Hail Mary pass. And in the ensuing six years since George Shultz et al. penned their plea, Kofi Annan has not distinguished himself or the United Nations in any substantive way, least of all in dealing with the global drug crisis. Read the letter again, Mr. Annan. Then stand tall or go back to Ghana.

As for the rest of us, we need to start asking what gives. Why are such bright and somber individuals, many world renowned, routinely ignored? There has to be a reason. Perhaps the answer is rooted in this simple question: Who benefits from the drug war? Whenever I ask this question, the near-unanimous response is "drug dealers." That is technically correct but not completely correct. As the global infrastructure to fight drugs continues to grow exponentially, government bureaucrats enlarge their fiefdoms and loathe seeing them shrink. It is arguable they care more for their private turf than the public square. So don't expect them to go away any more quietly than their strange bedfellows, the traffickers.

Drug dealers and drug warriors. They are the real winners. And one of the few things setting them apart is that drug dealers keep all the money we give them. Drug warriors do not. Either way, it's our money. And we keep giving it to them, prima facie evidence proving us the real losers. But it's more than just the money. It is the personal loss. We now have over two million prisoners in our penal system, second only to Russia, with 60% being non-violent drug offenders, many as average as any Joe. Talk to their families. Ask them if they consider their spouse or child criminal. Ask them if our drug laws make any sense. They won't be hard to find. They're already on the bus.

And ours is not the Who's Magic Bus, a song of yearning for something good, with the words "I want it, I want it" repeated over and over in increasing urgency only to be told "you can't have it," stretching the word can't as if to rub it in. No, our bus is different. But we too yearn for something good. We yearn for an end to warring against ourselves and beginning a new day a different way. We've long felt it in our hearts but now it's in our bones. We must tell our politicians so, repeatedly and urgently and not let them tell us we can't have it. Not anymore. Tell them they're either on the bus or off the bus.