The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, an American officer wounded a Panamanian policeman, the second shooting incident involving U.S. troops in three days, police found a bomb in an Atlanta courthouse, Romania closed its borders amid reports that troops fired on anti-government protesters. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, we begin with a renewed debate over legalizing drugs. Joining us are political scientist Ethan Nadelmann, Hartford, Connecticut Mayor Carrie Saxon Perry, New York narcotics prosecutor Sterling Johnson, and Congressman Charles Rangel. We get a report from Joanna Simon on an effort to save jobs at the Colorado symphony orchestra and we close with a Roger Rosenblatt essay on one of the cruelest lessons of life.NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WOODRUFF: There was another shooting in Panama today. According to the Associated Press, an American officer shot and wounded a Panamanian soldier after he thought the Panamanian was about to draw his gun. This morning, the White House said Panama was conducting a deliberate campaign of harassment against Americans in that country. Pres. Bush called the weekend killing of a U.S. Marine an enormous outrage. He said the United States was considering its options but refused to discuss whether military action was included. In an interview with the C-Span Television Network, Vice Pres. Quayle was asked about the rising tensions between the two countries.

VICE PRES. QUAYLE: Friday evening Gen. Noriega issued a statement of declaration of war, changes in the environment, unfortunately we had a killing of an American Marine, the harassing of two other Americans, the situation in Panama is serious, the President is monitoring it very closely and he is concerned as is everyone else.

REPORTER: What can you do down there?

VICE PRES. QUAYLE: I don't think you want to get into what you can or cannot do. This is too delicate of a situation. The President is reviewing it today, he reviewed it over the weekend, and he is taking this matter very seriously.

MS. WOODRUFF: U.S. Southern Command forces have been on maximum alert since the weekend shooting incident. U.S. troops were seen today patrolling base perimeters in battle gear. Meanwhile, members of the Panamanian defense forces blocked off streets in Panama City, the country's capital. Panamanian officials blamed the United States for the hostilities. They said the American soldier was killed in an attack on Noriega's headquarters and claimed that the United States had threatened an invasion four times in recent days. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: A bomb was delivered today that the U.S. Court of Appeals Building in Atlanta. Police safely removed the device after evacuating the courthouse. A police spokesman said it appeared to be a pipe bomb wrapped in a package with brown paper. He said it was discovered during a random search of the morning mail. The FBI said the package was addressed to someone in the court system, but would not identify who it was. FBI Agent Allen Whitaker of the Birmingham, Alabama, office said there was an apparent similarity between today's bomb and one which exploded in Birmingham this weekend, killing Federal Judge Robert Vance. The judge was killed when he opened a package addressed to him at his home. At a news conference today agent Whitaker said there'd been some progress in that investigation.

ALLEN WHITAKER, FBI: We believe we know the return address of the package containing the device which exploded at the Vance residence. We're still holding that as one of our prerogatives in being able to further the investigation. There's many individuals yet to be checked and we're in the process of doing it. There is, however, no single focus, I think it's important to say, and really as yet no motive.

MR. MacNeil: The FBI has issued an alert to all federal judges. They've been instructed not to open any packages until they've been inspected.

MS. WOODRUFF: There was a new revelation on U.S. policy towards China today. The White House disclosed that National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft made a secret trip to China in July, just one month after the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. The White House said Scowcroft was sent to personally underscore America's shock and concern about the violence in Tiananmen Square. Another visit by Scowcroft earlier this month was widely criticized in Congress for being too conciliatory toward China.

MR. MacNeil: Romania closed its borders today amid reports of a violent crackdown on anti-government demonstrators over the weekend. Foreign tourists reported that Romanian police shot at crowds of demonstrators in Timisoara, the nation's 4th largest city. There were reports that dozens were killed but they could not be confirmed. Romania is one of the few East European nations that has refused to make democratic reforms. In Czechoslovakia, where the Communist Party has already agreed to give up its guaranteed hold on power, the party newspaper printed a front page apology today. It was addressed to all those who were hurt by its past articles. It said past criticisms of political dissidents and the like did not reflect the positions of the majority of the paper's editors.

MS. WOODRUFF: Soviet Human Rights Leader Andrei Sakharov was buried today in a funeral attended by Mikhail Gorbachev and thousands of Soviet citizens. We have a report from Moscow by Robert Moore of Independent Television News.

MR. MOORE: Great scientists and ordinary Russians side by side filing past the man who for two decades was in official disgrace. His widow, Elana Bonner, stood beside him as she had done in his years of hardship. A grim Pres. Gorbachev and the Soviet prime minister this morning paid their final respects. Gorbachev met and quietly consoled Elana Bonner, no clearer sign possible that the hounding of the Sakharov family is now seen in the Kremlin as a dark page in Soviet history. At a remembrance rally tens of thousands of Muscovites gathered. They recognize they have lost a moral leader who stood up to a system that broke so many others. As darkness fell tonight, Sakharov was buried in a simple cemetery, his family and friends alongside him. In life, he'd been described as an enemy of the Soviet people. In death he is spoken of as the conscience of a nation.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mikhail Gorbachev, who ordered Sakharov's release from internal exile three years ago, said today now it is clear that Sakharov deserved the Nobel prize. Sakharov won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 for his human rights campaign. But the Soviet leadership at the time refused to let him travel abroad to let him accept it.

MR. MacNeil: A congressional report issued today criticized security programs at the Federal Aviation Administration. A report by the General Accounting Office said new procedures instituted after the bombing of Pan Am 103 are not being carried out properly. The report attributed much of the failure to lack of training standards. Kenneth Mead, director of transportation issues at GAO, testified before a presidential commission looking into the Pan Am crash and other air security issues.

KENNETH MEAD, General Accounting Office: In the areas we reviewed, FAA just simply did not have an adequate quality assurance program to identify fundamental weaknesses existing in its own security program. If security is to be provided at a level the public expects, FAA simply must develop an internal capacity to critically examine its own security program on an ongoing basis.

MR. MacNeil: Transportation Sec. Samuel Skinner said today that security on U.S. airlines has improved in the year since the Pan Am bombing. Speaking on ABC Television this morning, he said there was no reason for people to stop flying. Also today the United Nations sponsored international civil aviation organization announced that it will offer money and advice to countries needing help to protect their aviation systems from terrorist attacks. The program is scheduled to begin January 1st.

MS. WOODRUFF: Random drug testing began today in the nation's transportation industry. The airlines are the first to begin the new program. Workers in safety related positions like pilots, flight engineers and air traffic controllers will have their urine tested for traces of marijuana, cocaine and amphetamines. The drug tests will begin in the shipping, railroad, trucking and other industries during the next few weeks. Several lawsuits are already underway against the new rule. That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to a debate over legalizing drugs, a report on a recovery effort at the Colorado symphony orchestra and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - LEGALIZING DRUGS

MR. MacNeil: We go first tonight to an old argument that has taken on new life, drug legalization. A growing chorus of prominent and ideologically diverse voices from public life and academic circles are asking for a reconsideration of present drug policy. This weekend Michigan Democratic George Crockett became the first member of Congress to call publically for the decriminalization of drugs. Last week Robert Sweet, a federal district judge in Manhattan, endorsed legalizing all drugs including marijuana, heroin and crack. Other like-minded advocates include conservative commentator William F. Buckley and Kurt Schmoke, the Democratic Mayor of Baltimore. Also among the ranks of legalization advocates is former Sec. of State George Shultz. Last October at the Stanford Business School, Shultz said, "We're not really going to get anywhere until we can take the criminality out of the drug business." Earlier in the Wall Street Journal Economist and Nobel Prize Winner Milton Friedman endorsed drug legalization in open letter to William Bennett, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. A week ago, Bennett responded to these and other drug legalization supports in a speech at Harvard University.

WILLIAM BENNETT, Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy: Legalization advocates think that the cost of enforcing drug laws is too great but the real question, the question they never ask, is what does it cost not to enforce those laws? The price that American Society would have to pay for legalized drugs, I submit, would be intolerably high. We would have more drug related accidents on the highways and in the air ways. We would have even bigger losses in worker productivity. What about crime? To listen to some legalization advocates one might think that street crime would disappear with the repeal of our drug laws. They haven't done their homework, I believe. Our best research indicates, we could use some more research on this indeed, but our best research, much of it done here, indicates that most criminals were in to crime well before they got in to drugs. Making drugs legal would just be a way of subsidizing their habit. They would continue to rob and steal to pay for food, for clothes, for entertainment.

MR. MacNeil: We join this debate now with four different perspectives. For legalization we have Ethan Nadelman, a Professor of Politics and Public Affairs that the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs at Princeton University. And joining us from Hartford, Connecticut is Democratic Mayor Carey Saxon Perry. She's in the studios of Public Station WEDH. Against legalization, we have Sterling Johnson the special narcotics prosecutor for New York City and Democratic Congressman Charles Rangle from New York who is Chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. Prof. Nadelman your article in Science Magazine which has stirred up some of the fresh debate on this including the article that got George Schultz to take the position we quoted him as taking. Very simply, would you state your argument for us. Why legalize, what are the benefits of legalizing, and how would you restrict the use of drugs if you did legalize it?

ETHAN NADELMANN, Political Scientist: Robin, it's basically a three part argument. The first one is that everything we've been doing in the past in terms of criminal justice approaches to the drug problem, everything we're doing now, and everything that people from Charlie Rangle to Bill Bennett are talking about doing in the future is doomed to failure. And it has nothing to do with turf squabbles between law enforcement agencies or corruption line in America. It has to do with the nature of the market and nature of the commodity and how lucrative the whole thing is. Simply stated, we can't keep drugs out of the country, we can't keep them out of the inner cities, we can't keep them out of the hands of those people who want them. Secondly and more importantly is that drug policies are not only not working very well, they're proving highly costly and counterproductive in much way the same way that alcohol prohibition did 60 years ago. Everything from organized crime to rising levels of violence and corruption, overflowing prison, even tens of thousands of people dying or being poisoned by bad drugs in the same way that people were poisoned by bad bootlegged liquor 60 years ago. All of those things are the results of drug prohibition. Now legalization isn't a panacea, its no surrender but it an alternative. The third party argument is that we have a lot less to fear from legalization than most people assume. That if you run a policy even half way intelligently, it will be far superior to the drug prohibition policy thatwe've had so far.

MR. MacNeil: How do you prevent, how do you restrict the use of drugs if you legalize it?

MR. NADELMANN: Sixty years ago when we went to prohibition to restrict the availability of alcohol the British wanted to restrict alcoholism as well. What they did was not to go to prohibition. What they did they taxed much higher, they placed all sorts of time and place restrictions, they did all sorts of things like that. The British succeeded in reducing alcoholism and acholic related ills much more successfully than we did in the United States and without all the cost, with out giving billions of dollars to criminals and wasting billions of dollars in taxes. So when I ask how do you do a legalization plan today we don't just throw up our hands. What we do is we restrict, we tax, we set up better programs and we take the resources that we're putting now into more and more prisons and more and more jail cells and more and more interdiction, we take those resources and we put them into the types of things that we know work. And what that means is Head Start programs, pre and post natal care, better schools. Those are the best drug prevention programs we've ever seen. They're the decent and compassionate thing to do and dollar for dollar they're more effective than building more courts and more prisons to throw more people in jail for drug law violations.

MR. MacNeil: Okay, Mayor Perry in Hartford, you're a fairly recent convert to the idea of de-criminalization. What is your argument for doing that?

MAYOR CARRIE SAXON PERRY, Hartford, Connecticut: Not a recent convert. I did testify at Rangel's committee, Congressman Rangel's committee in '88 and I've always thought about it but I wasn't in a public position in which people were listening as closely. I am responding to de-criminalization because I am in the eye of the hurricane here in the City of Hartford and I just heard the comments from Bennett when he said that these are criminals who are mostly involved. In the City of Hartford, he must not have visited. Many of them are young people and a great deal of the attraction that is involved in this underground economy and this is one of the reasons that I think this is important for us as a nation and as policy makers to look at this as a real alternative and to explore it rather than to be smug and ignore it.

MR. MacNeil: Congressman Rangel, are you being smug and ignoring it?

REP. CHARLES RANGEL, [D] New York: No, it's fortunate that there are not too many people involved in this so called legalization. I think as it relates to Judge Crocket coming from the intercity of Detroit that his constituencies deal with more than that problem there. It's interesting to note how the professor, and underscore professor, is talking about what is needed in the inner-cities, as though we would have to legalize drugs in order to deal with the problems of the poor. It would seem to me that now is the time to talk about better education, better housing, better job skills, better opportunities especially for our homeless where we have a large number of addicted people. I think it's mean spirited to say that the only way to get this money to take care of these serious social problems is to legalize drugs or to say that the penal system is not working properly. It never has, it certainly isn't working now, and I think this is the time to talk about prison reform, but it is just absolutely dumb to say that in order to take care of the problems of the poor in the intercities and in order to reform a non working failing prison systemwe will have to expose millions of people to a poisonous drug that causes children to be born addicted physically and mentally impaired and to become impediments on society for years ahead.

MR. MacNeil: I take it you haven't heard anything from Prof. Nadelmann to change your mind.

REP. RANGEL: The professor and other professors I really think have enough time to go to cocktail parties to go on the lecture circuit and to chit chat about this thing. As a matter of fact,the former Secretary of State has never given any formal speeches or written any serious papers about drug addiction, nor did he indicate any interest in having this as a foreign policy priority during the time that he was Secretary of State on this program or any. Interesting though that he would find time to focus on this at a cocktail party and I think that's where the discussion should stay.

MR. MacNeil: Did you hear, have you heard anything in the new argument, Mr. Johnson to change your mind about legalization?

STERLING JOHNSON, Narcotics Prosecutor, NYC: First of all I don't think it's new. I've heard nothing that would persuade me. I find nothing that's interesting. I think the proponents of legalization are seeking to solve a complex problem with very very simple solutions. And when you're trying to impose legalization of drugs on the people in the intercities what a horrible subliminal message this sends to people in the intercities. You speak to parents to the addicts and they say no, we do not want legal drugs, we want to abstain from drugs all together. Can you see giving a baby some crack in the pablum can you see putting heroin in the milk? I suggest not. And if you are going to have a cut off at a certain age you're still going to have a black market and you are still going to have drug selling and drug using. You're not going to solve the problem.

MR. MacNeil: Prof. Nadelmann, you have with you two of the staunchest opponents to your ideas who are each as responsible officials carry a great deal of authority in their different spheres. You have an opportunity to persuade them.

PROF. NADELMANN: Well the first thing I could probably say to the Congressman, from what I understand, you have far greater experience with cocktail parties now that I have ever had or will ever had that if first. Secondly you talk about the crack babies right and crack babies are a horrible thing in our society there is no question about it.

REP. RANGEL: They're not things they are human beings.

PROF. NADELMANN: Exactly. Let's remember that 5 years ago when Reagan declared this war on drugs and while you were ahead of the Select Committee on narcotics in the House there were no crack babies. Everything that you've been talking about and the administration because there is really not that much difference between you and the Administration. Everything that you have been talking about has done nothing for those crack babies. And you know why Congressman building more prisons. We've doubled. We are going to have a million people behind bars as of next year. Double what it was ten years triple what it was 15 years. That doesn't prevent crack babies. If you would stop pulling the wool over the eyes of the people in the inter cities and persuading them that somehow we can keep drugs out of this country only if we wanted to and persuade them that we need to invest the limited resources where they make a difference. Put that money, tell Bennett that you don't want money for more cops and more prisons that you want money for head start and pre imposed natal care. You have a lot of power in Congress, you can do that but I have not heard you and most other black leaders in the intercities calling for that. I have a lot of respect for Mayor Schmolk. They are not professors, they are viewing the problem even more directly than you are. And I think that they have guts to stand up their as elected officials and say what is right.

REP. RANGEL: Professor, I've never seen you so out of control and so emotional. We're only having a discussion and I thought you just wanted to have a debate. First of all you don't have to talk about black leaders unless you think that is a black problem. And I'm prepared to discuss that with you so I don't know why you think if we are talking about social reform that is a matter just for leaders to happen to be black. Second, you coupled me with Ronald Reagan, and this is a man who has slashed the budget some $200 billion in social and economic programs, domestic programs, and I would like to be included in that number that have fought against this. I don't think that any one has been more outspoken. Why in God's name, would you take such a stupid argument of legalization to push me and others to do the right moral thing and that is to try to eliminate poverty, to call for more indecent houses. I don't know what you do at Princeton. But I don't run away from my record on what I have advocated and what I have done to improve the quality of live. Why would you have to have legalization to do these things? That's absolutely dumb.

PROF. NADELMANN: Because, you know why, Congressman prohibition is making things worse. You've got a situation now in the intercities.

REP. RANGEL: You talk about liquor --

PROF. NADELMANN: Excuse me --

REP. RANGEL: You talk about liquor with prohibition.

MR. MacNeil: Let him finish his point.

PROF. NADELMANN: You've got a situation where kids are growing up and their role models are not you but the drug dealers. You're creating a situation under prohibition where there are tremendous economic incentives for the best and the brightest of the kids in the intercities to drop out of school and to go and be a drug dealer. You're creating a situation where the drugs on the streets are far more dangerous because they are adulterated.

REP. RANGEL: You still have boot legging as far as it relates to liquor. And why do you keep talking about liquor, when it's far easier to walk away from a cocktail than it is from a crack vial. I mean why do you keep talking about this like prohibition was something that was so terrible that illegalized liquor and so they should legalize crack? To follow your argument it would be like giving another drink to an acholic and making it legal.

PROF. NADELMANN: Not at all, Congressman, not at all.

REP. RANGEL: Why do you believe that we cannot have better schools, better housing, better job opportunities. Why do you have to hitch these moral issues to this dumb program of legalization. Why can't you say that our prison system is not working? We put in dumb people, we discharge dumb people, they don't have any skills, they can't assimilate in society. Can't you get on something that deals with prison reform, that improves education with out saying that in the intercities that we should take care of these problems by dispensing drugs.

PROF. NADELMANN: Congressman, open your eyes. Because when you what is happening we've had drug prohibition and drug rules in the intercities for 20 years and things have just gotten worse and worse.

REP. RANGEL: How would somebody from Princeton know this?

PROF. NADELMANN: And that's the result.

REP. RANGEL: How would you know this from Princeton?

MR. MacNeil: Let's go to somebody who administers an city with a big intercity. Mayor Perry.

MAYOR PERRY: That's right. I wanted to ask what have been the benefits of prohibition. Things have gotten much worse. Probably I would be a little bit more confident if Congressman Rangle was the Drug Czar. But I'm not very confident with Bennett being the drug czar that we are going to have some change. We are talking about what is going to happen. In 20 years we won't have any young people or babies to talk about if this continues to escalate. 80 percent of the crimes committed in the City of Hartford are drug related. And many people are victims who are not drug users. So you have an epidemic where you have the victim and the victimizers both suffering equally. So somewhere along the line we have to interrupt, interrupt this epidemic. We must listen to this plague and say what are some of the alternatives. We can not dismiss looking at all the choices that are threatening. It is worse than the oil spill in Alaska. We're 2 percent of the population in the world and 60 percent of the consumers. Why? Why is there such a great demand for drugs within our community, and in our inner-city, one of the driving is the money and there is the outstanding collusion among every one with in the neighborhoods because of the amount of money involved. There are more people who would otherwise turn their backs on this kind of unacceptable social behavior but because of a Reagan administration which caused so many people to be homeless, because we have so many unemployed they respond to this kind of economy I'm saying to all of you in this wonderful debate that there are serious thing that are happening and our cities are drying. The prison sucks and you talk about reform, you're talking about turning things around. We're talking about a number of years and I'm saying let's be serious and look at it.

MR. MacNeil: Mayor Perry, let me interrupt you for a moment. Let me ask you, Mr. Johnson, are you prepared to consider that there's an alternative, a real alternative to the present policy?

MR. JOHNSON: We need more treatment, prevention, education. We need law enforcement but you can't have one of these.

MR. MacNeil: But those are all the present policy.

MR. JOHNSON: No, it's not. We're getting them now and you must have all of these things going at one time. You can't have law enforcement at the expense of education, or education at the expense of prevention. You need all of these things are much like the moving parts of an automobile. You actually need this. Following the legalization argument we have problems with burglary and rape why not legalize that. Same argument.

PROF. NADELMANN: Oh, come on.

MR. JOHNSON: Why not legalize that? Then you take a proponent of legalization as Mr. Rangel said, from Princeton, telling the people in the inter city what is good for them. It has no credibility.

MAYOR PERRY: Mr. Nadelmann is not telling me anything. I'd like a little respect in terms of my ability to arrive at certain decisions on my own. I think it's very important that people don't want to admit that they have been making a mistake for 70 years. Prohibition has been here for 70 years and we have the worse drug epidemic ever.

MR. MacNeil: Congressman Rangel says your idea of legalization is dumb why do you believe that it is not dumb in simple terms.

PROF. NADELMANN: Why? Because simple common sense as well as a careful study of the evidence shows that most of what people identify as part and parcel of the drug problem are in fact the results of drug prohibition. That's why.

MR. MacNeil: But even if that is true, if you cease prohibition and make marijuana and heroin and cocaine and crack available, generally available to the adult population, because most of these proposals would limit it. Aren't you going to make things much worse. There will be more drug induced accidents , people flying planes and running trains.

PROF. NADELMANN: I make an assumption that the vast majority of Americans don't need drug laws to keep from becoming drug addicts. Secondly, that the millions of people in the intercities who are drug abusers and drug addicts there is nothing that criminal laws can keep that from happening. The only thing that may work are beneficial programs like Head Start and pre and post natal care. All the economic incentives we create through prohibition induce more of those people to drug dealing and drug use.

MR. MacNeil: What is your answer to that, that none of the criminal justice system can prevent people in the intercity or out of the intercity from using drugs.

MR. JOHNSON: Laws cannot legislate human behavior. I don't disagree with that.

MR. MacNeil: So you agree with him on that.

MR. JOHNSON: But using that same argument, let's legalize rape, let's legalize murder, let's legalize burglary. That's the same argument.

PROF. NADELMANN: That's ludicrous. There's a simple difference, simple difference. With rape, murder, robbery, extortion, people cannot walk away from those crimes. With drugs prostitution what have you, you know something you can walk away. Most people do say no. That's the big difference.

MR. JOHNSON: You can't walk away from a drug crime.

PROF. NADELMANN: Come on.

REP. RANGEL: When you talk about the jail system --

PROF. NADELMANN: You know something, drugs are not genies. They don't jump at you. They don't seize you. They're not like Ulysses and the sirens where somehow you'll just be totally bought into the thing.

REP. RANGEL: Some of us --

PROF. NADELMANN: Most people in this world say no to drugs, say no to drug abuse that is going to be true whether we have drug laws or not.

MR. MacNeil: Congressman Rangel.

REP. RANGEL: Some of us are not prepared to write off these kids in the inner-cities, and I would agree with you, Professor, that this criminal justice system is not working. It would seem to me that we could open up some of our military camps that we could have half way house, that we could educate these inmates, that we could prepare them to assimilate into society. And that we could do this without saying that we are giving up and we are giving them drugs. Some of the questions that I have raised you and Judge Sweet and others have never really answered and that is this that one, I assume you're talking about a legal dosage. Have you ever seen an alcoholic say that he's had enough? Aren't they going after the so- called legal dosage into the illegal market.

MR. MacNeil: Let's ask him that.

REP. RANGEL: Yes, aren't they going to do that.

MR. MacNeil: Let's ask him that.

PROF. NADELMANN: AA and other alcohol treatment units have millions of people who actually did hit a point where they just said no. Where they said enough is enough.

REP. RANGEL: You get your prescription drug

PROF. NADELMANN: You brought up liquor and you brought alcoholics. When you ask a question wait for the answer.

REP. RANGEL: What about on crack, Professor?

PROF. NADELMANN: You know something, most people in this world don't want to take crack and those people who are taking crack right now, there's nothing that your drug prohibition can do to stop that. And what's more there are people who take crack who have stopped and they've stopped not just because they're going to jail, because as you know, jail doesn't make them drug free.

REP. RANGEL: The question, Professor --

PROF. NADELMANN: Charlie, stop interrupting okay. You asked a question and I'll give you an answer.

REP. RANGEL: The question is once you get the legal dosage, do they go into the elicit market for what they want to get high? That's the question.

MR. MacNeil: All right.

REP. RANGEL: If not, why not?

MR. MacNeil: There's the question. If you let people have the substance legally, how are you going to stop a black market from forming so that they will be able to pay to get it outside hours or more than the amount that's legally available?

PROF. NADELMANN: Alcohol and tobacco are legal and we still have black markets in alcohol and tobacco for kids --

REP. RANGEL: It's because you still have --

MR. MacNeil: Let him answer, Congressman.

PROF. NADELMANN: You want to know something, a lot better world in which 90 to 95 percent of the market is legal, regulated tax controlled, than one like the current system, the one which you both support, which is one where the criminals control it, where they determine price, purity, what have you, we now have 95 to 100 percent black market. I'm not saying legalization eliminates the black market. I am saying that we should bring the problem above ground and go to a world in which 70 percent of the market is legitimate, legal control, we live in a much better world, one with fewer drug over doses, one with much poorer criminals, one where cops and police can go after the types of criminals that people cannot walk away from.

REP. RANGEL: I made you admit it doesn't eliminate the illegal market. The other question I have, and you always have difficulty - -

PROF. NADELMANN: 80 percent's not bad. 80 percent's not bad.

REP. RANGEL: Just a couple of seconds ago, it was 70 percent.

PROF. NADELMANN: Charlie, you're no better at predicting the future than I am.

REP. RANGEL: The question I have is that assuming you are not going to discriminate against the poor who are drug addicts and that it has to be dispensed to them, I ask under what program would you suggest that we provide it to them? Would it be an expansion of Medicaid, would we have drug stamps, or would we just that we're lowering the price and they have to go to their public hospitals to receive it?

PROF. NADELMANN: What we do with oral methadone today we can do with other drugs as well.

REP. RANGEL: Oh, my God, yes.

PROF. NADELMANN: In England, you have not just oral methadone, you have injectable methadone, injectable heroin maintenance, even injectable cocaine maintenance. My first priority is this. I want to make it less likely that addicts go out and hurt other people. And if that means giving them the drugs that they want to use and even killing themselves, so be it.

REP. RANGEL: Oh, my God.

PROF. NADELMANN: Secondly, secondly, I'm saying that our second priority with addicts, the addicts are getting the drugs anyway and as it is right now they're stealing and mugging and hurting other people to raise the money. I'm saying take away the need to raise the money, give it to them, and secondly, give them the resources in a positive sense, in a positive sense to make it less likely that they need to go out and do those things.

MR. MacNeil: Let's have Mr. Johnson here.

MR. JOHNSON: What I hear with that argument is that not we care so much for the addicts we want to do something for the addicts. What I hear is that let's give them drugs so they won't harm us.

PROF. NADELMANN: If that's what you hear, then you're not listening.

MR. JOHNSON: I'm listening. I'm listening.

PROF. NADELMANN: What I'm saying is that our first priority to society is to make it less likely that addicts hurt other people. My first concern is innocent people. I don't want innocent people to be hurt by drug addicts. My second priority is help the drug addicts, and that means positive things, not prison cells, not go to jail first before we give you a treatment program.

REP. RANGEL: Let me see how positive you can be, Professor. Right now we're fighting --

MAYOR PERRY: There's no one in this country --

MR. MacNeil: Mayor Perry.

REP. RANGEL: But right now we're fighting to get Medicaid expanded in --

MR. MacNeil: Let Mayor Perry talk.

MAYOR PERRY: This is the disadvantage of not being in New York with the guys, but anyway there is no one in this country that believes we're winning the war on drugs. In our cities, everyone feels like a hostage. If you ask anyone what is their priority, they say public safety and education of our young people and also for them to grow up and to live. And the policy that is working now, there is no indication that there is a will and a spirit on the national level to really put an all out effort --

MR. MacNeil: Mayor, I have to interrupt you there because we've just come to the end of our time. I'd just like to ask each of you as we go around, the mayor says it isn't working, she thinks it can't work, you think it can't work, the present policy. Do you really think the present policy can work, the policy you're wedded to can work?

MR. JOHNSON: Yes, I think it can. If we have this commitment and not just rhetoric that we've been having for ten, twenty years - -

MR. MacNeil: Still just rhetoric? Is it still just rhetoric?

MR. JOHNSON: We had rhetoric ten to twenty years, but if you put some resources into treatment, prevention, education, also enforcement, then I think that we can do it.

MR. MacNeil: Do you really think the policy can work?

REP. RANGEL: If we really declared war and all we've had is a war of words, we really haven't put the resources there. It's interesting that the professor would talk about using the Medicaid program to dispense the poison when we have not been successful enough to use the Medicaid program to provide treatment for addicts and so it seems to me that if we fight on the areas that Sterling Johnson was talking about, we can win. On the other hand, we can surrender the whole darn thing to the drug pushers to supplement the program.

MR. MacNeil: I have a feeling we'll be back to this argument. Congressman, Mr. Johnson, Prof. Nadelmann, and Mayor Perry, thank you all for joining us.

MS. WOODRUFF: We had hoped to bring you a report on the Colorado symphony but because the drug discussion ran longer than expected we will broadcast it on another evening. Next tonight the report from Vancouver British Columbia on the wave of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. The British colony is scheduled to revert to the government of Mainland China in 1997. Last June's brutal crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Beijing convinced many in Hong Kong that their future might be imperiled under Communist rule. The exodus of wealthy Hong Kong residents to Canada is creating a cultural clash between new immigrants and longtime residents. We have a report from Lee Hochberg of public station KCTS-Seattle.

MR. HOCHBERG: Without even knowing it, Ernest Lui has just made his escape from the Communist Government of Mainland China. Ernest was born in a hospital in Vancouver British Columbia. That makes him a Canadian citizen and gives him the right to live in Canada. His parents are from Hong Kong. Moses and Eva Lui boarded an airplane to Vancouver when Eva was seven months pregnant just so the boy could be born in Canada.

EVA LUI, Mother: I bring him to the world and I think I should have the responsibility to provide him a good future.

MR. HOCHBERG: And you're afraid of Hong Kong's future?

MRS. LUI: Yeah. I think most people in Hong Kong do.

MOSES LUI, Father: It's no fun playing with Communist Party. He always win and you lose.

MR. HOCHBERG: Like thousands of others, the Luis fear political and economic repression will come to Hong Kong in 1997, when Britain relinquishes control of the colony to the People's Republic of China. Having the baby in Canada cost the Luis $10,000 for travel and lodging and medical care, but now when Ernest gets older, he'll be able to sponsor the whole family's immigration to Canada.

MRS. LUI: There is one Chinese saying. Life is precious and so is love, but freedom surpasses all.

MR. HOCHBERG: Other parents to be have also traveled from Hong Kong to Vancouver this year to take out this creative form of insurance.

DR. HARRY LEONG, Vancouver Obstetrician: I would guess this year there are over a hundred, at least over a hundred, living in Vancouver proper, and then of course you have babies being born in outlying districts.

MR. HOCHBERG: Danny Gaw is one of a new wave of Hong Kong business people who figured out another way to get into Vancouver. He couldn't get into the United States because of strict immigration laws, but he entered Canada under an immigration policy designed to attract wealthy people. Canadian law allowed him in when he promised to start a new business and employ Canadian citizens. He opened Max's Donuts and he's come to be known as Canada's West Coast Donut King. His company sells more than 80,000 donuts a day.

DANNY GAW, Hong Kong Immigrant: Tiananmen Square have certainly open up many people's eyes. It's sort of give them more fear of what could happen. If you say anything drastic against the government they would come to your house, knock on your door and take you away without knowing where you have been taken away like what's happening now. That type of policy they can introduce overnight, so that means if you want to survive, you have to keep your mouth shut.

MR. HOCHBERG: Hong Kong's loss has been Vancouver's financial gain. Gaw estimates he's invested $10 million in Vancouver between this business and some real estate holdings. Others, in an effort to get their money out of Hong Kong, have invested even more. Hong Kong billionaire Li Kacing spend $300 million to purchase the downtown Vancouver site of the expo '86 World's Fair. Hong Kong businessmen have sunk millions into hotels, shopping centers and resorts throughout British Columbia. Hong Kong officials estimate some 2 1/2 billion Hong Kong dollars are being pumped into Vancouver each year. Even the Bank of British Columbia was taken over by the Hong Kong Bank. More than 5,000 immigrants from Hong Kong have come to Vancouver in 1989.

PAUL DOCKSTEADER, Docksteader Volvo: We see these people coming into town, coming right from the plane, right to the dealership and purchasing one, two, maybe three cars for the family and moving into a brand new house. It's quite fascinating actually.

MR. HOCHBERG: The manager of Vancouver's largest Volvo dealership says more than half of the cars he's sold so this year have gone to new arrivals from Hong Kong, and he's had to hire Chinese speaking salesmen. The influx of fast money is exactly what British Columbian leaders dreamed of when they hosted the 1986 World's Fair. Now there's been a cultural and racial backlash against the new immigrants. Never have the people of Vancouver seen a wave of immigrants quite like this one, wealthy Chinese arriving in town at the top of the economic ladder rather than the bottom.

VANCOUVER RESIDENT: I have nothing against the Chinese. I like the Chinese. It's a feeling for the neighborhood and for it being settled here. I would like the people who come in to really belong here.

VANCOUVER RESIDENT: They can't speak English. They can't speak French, and it means that we have to spend a tremendous amount of time trying to get them able to understand what our way of living is all about.

GRAHAM JOHNSON, University of British Columbia: These people are one, buying good houses, two, they're buying expensive automobiles. Three, their children are succeeding at traditional pursuits like piano or violin, and this is creating an astonishing reaction on the part of the elite, the Vancouver elite who has never seen a non-WASP population able to succeed instantaneously.

MR. HOCHBERG: Newspapers began warning of an Asian invasion when the government delivered the World's Fair site into the hands of Hong Kong's Li Kashing. Real estate experts had said the huge parcel of downtown land is the most valuable parcel of undeveloped real estate in North America. A few months later, Li's real estate company began building these luxury condominiums downtown but said it had already pre-sold them to investors in Hong Kong. Canadians couldn't buy in. Then Vancouver residents began getting hit right where they live. In some of Vancouver's most exclusive neighborhoods, developers started bull dozing down fine old homes. They were making room to build new mansions that could be tailored specifically to the tastes of wealthy Hong Kong buyers.

MARY LAVIN: You'll notice the 8's in the address on this house. There are three of them. This would be very desirable to an Asian buyer. Eights signify prosperity. And it's very important that an 8 be in the address if an Asian is going to purchase here.

MR. HOCHBERG: Mary Lavin heads a citizens organization, RSVP, or Residents Save Vancouver Please. Lavin claims immigrants with money to burn are purchasing these so-called monster homes at far above market price and they're driving home prices city wide out of the range of the average Vancouver resident.

MS. LAVIN: As we drive along, we're approaching another more blatant example of insensitivity to Canadian identity, a pretentious design, again built to the maximum of the property, the foliage has been removed. Our government is permitting the imposition of one culture over the already existing culture and driving up the real estate prices.

MR. HOCHBERG: In fact, the Vancouver Real Estate Board says the price of an average Vancouver has skyrocketed $55,000 in just one year. [RADIO TALK SHOW]

MR. HOCHBERG: Blaming the Asian newcomers for the soaring housing prices has become Vancouver sport. The immigrants' only allies seem to be those who are making money off the market like this talk show host who says he could sell his home now for a $200,000 profit. [RADIO TALK SHOW]

GORDON CAMPBELL, Vancouver Mayor: Unfortunately there are winners and losers, andthe winners are people that have owned houses and they can have owned houses for 30 years.

MR. HOCHBERG: Vancouver Mayor Gordon Campbell was elected with heavy support from Vancouver developers on the promise to reach out to the Far East and expand Vancouver's economy. He prefers to blame the super heated housing market on some 40,000 newcomers who flock to BC from elsewhere in Canada.

MAYOR CAMPBELL: All I can say is this is not being fueled by foreigners. It's being fueled by us.

MR. HOCHBERG: In an apartment across town former Vancouver Mayor Jack Vulrich calls to order the regular meeting of the British/European Immigration Aid Foundation. That's a group fighting the Hong Kong integration and sworn to preserve the European nature of Canada.

MR. VULRICH: There are certain groups which for religious reasons or otherwise can find it very very difficult to assimilate into the Canadian way of life.

MR. HOCHBERG: What groups are those?

SPOKESMAN: I think some of the Chinese, not all of them, but some of them do find it very very difficult, because there's a very very strong nationalist tradition with the Chinese, where the people from Europe and the people from Britain will be assimilated much more easily.

JACK VULRICH, British/European Immigration Aid Foundation: I think there's a very natural concern of a Canadian that he would not like to see too much of his city or his country owned by other people. [RADIO PROGRAMS]

MR. HOCHBERG: The growing hostility toward the Chinese newcomers is making many of Vancouver's longtime Chinese residents jittery. Talk Show Host Hansen Lao opens up the phone lines to his Chinese speaking audience once a week. [RADIO TALK SHOW]

MR. HOCHBERG: Tonight he gets calls from some Chinese who've been in Vancouver all of their lives who say they are being targeted by the growing anti-Hong Kong fervor.

MR. LAO: One night about 8 PM she was driving her car and came to a stop sign. She stopped. There was a truck. She had her sun roof open and the truck driver shouting through the sun roof because the truck was higher, turned to her and said, Hong Kong people you go home, and she's a Canadian. She's not a new immigrant. She's not an immigrant; she's Canadian. He even threw a cigarette butt through the sun roof into her car.

MR. HOCHBERG: With Canadian leaders hungry for Asian money, the number of immigrants from Hong Kong is only going to grow. Real estate agent Andrea Eng sold Hong Kong investors $200 million of Vancouver property this year. She says she's embarrassed by the rude greeting many of her clients have received.

ANDREA ENG, Real Estate Agent: You can't say to the people of Hong Kong at the same time that we want your money but we don't want you to live in the neighborhood. That's impossible. I think that's totally unacceptable.

MR. HOCHBERG: People like Eng say with 1997 right around the corner, Vancouver residents are just going to have to get used to their new neighbors from the Far East. ESSAY - LIFE'S LESSONS

MS. WOODRUFF: Finally our regular essayist Roger Rosenblatt has some thoughts about a recent tragedy.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Is it possible at last with several weeks gone by to understand what happened to the nine children who were killed in a wind storm in Upstate New York? The event flew down on the country's head like the school wall that crushed the children as they sat at lunchtime in the cafeteria, the suddenness and horror, then a news flash. For myself, I didn't want to hear and I didn't want to look. I didn't want to see the little bodies. I didn't want to watch the funerals.

FATHER OF VICTIM: My son's in a hospital. That's all I know.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Most definitely I did not want to see some reporter poke his mike into the face of a grieving parent and ask what it felt like. Every parent in the world can imagine what it felt like. Yet, there is a need to understand such events, a need to put things in order, a freakish killing committed by nature acting like a whim or a twitch, the middle of an ordinary day, an accelerated wind, and nine schoolchildren gone. The idea of school plays a part in one's emotional fumbling. Children are entrusted to schools. So schools are expected to provide safe houses. Still there was that story in Northern Israel years ago about terrorists invading a school and killing the kids. More recently schoolchildren in California were mowed down by a mad man with an AK-47. And there is continuous news of kids shooting or knifing other kids in city schools. Not that seeing recurrences makes the idea more palatable, but in the public consciousness, schools are seen less and less as safety zones. It wasn't the school that got to you in this case. It was the natural casualness of the act, the sort of death by nature that confirms you in your disbelief if you doubt the existence of a deity, and if you don't makes you question the concept of the deity you believe in.

GOV. CUOMO: Remembering them, may all of us, each of us in this state, help dry one another's tears.

MR. ROSENBLATT: Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York gave a thoughtful and touching eulogy for the children killed. Trying to explain the inexplicable, he cited a parable from the Talmud in which a rabbi's two sons, the lights of his life, suddenly died. The moral of the parable was that one must be grateful both for what God gives and for what he takes away, easy to say, hard to do. An occurrence like the wall falling on the children that defies ones understanding only exacerbates the helplessness of mortality. Everyone loves a lesson. What lesson may be culled from this? What may be learned from the death of the schoolchildren is the lesson we live with as a daily routine. There is the world we understand and there is the world we do not understand, the world we will never understand for all our explorations into the particles of matter and the chemistry of the brain. It is a matter of exercising the imagination. The fearful side of our imaginations it he ability to foresee the worst tragedies in the most innocent circumstances as when one's child leaves home for school on an ordinary morning. The survival side of our imaginations is the way one imaginations in the face of the greatest loss that life will go on. At times like this one wants the dead to be connected to the living, so that somehow in some form of dream and memory, the nine dead schoolchildren will survive. Otherwise, the lesson is the oldest. Build a wall against the wind and hold your breath. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Once again Monday's top stories, an American military officer shot and wounded a Panamanian policeman, the second shooting incident involving U.S. troops in three days, the Bush administration accused Panama of a coordinated wave of violence against Americans. A bomb was mailed to the federal courthouse in Atlanta, two days after a judge was killed by a mail bomb in Alabama, and tonight there was a report of an explosion at the office of a court officer in Savannah, Georgia, he was seriously injured, and in Eastern Europe, dozens of anti-government protesters were reported killed by Romanian troops as that country closed its borders to the West. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Robin. That's our Newshour for tonight. We'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Judy Woodruff. Thank you and good night.