editorial comment Bennett is one of the most hypocritical guy around. Writing on values while losing millions on gambling (yes, Billy, it's OK to gamble, but one would think that a great man like you could have used this money for a "higher purpose" than having fun in Vegas). Maybe you should read your boring book yourself.......

A few days ago the King County, Washington government made it illegal to throw computers and cell phones away.

That created, or expanded, a new industry - disposal of computers and cell phones in Seattle and environs. New businesses formed, other already existing firms expanded their operations.

This kind of thing happens often. Government creates a need and the business community rushes to fill it with goods or services we didn't previously need.

For instance, some of those rental storage unit companies once went to the Nevada Legislature and asked for a law that said they were exempt from legal responsibility for the security of their storage units. Such companies provide only two things, storage and security, and the change would cut that burden in half, but the Legislature passes liability waivers out like cookies.

So the change was made, subject to a provision that renters had to be warned on the rental contract to get insurance if they wanted some protection for their property.

So a new industry came to be - the sale of insurance on the contents of rental storage units.

I was reminded of all this when I heard about former Reagan cabinet member William Bennett's comments on aborting black babies.

Bennett was appearing on a call-in show and a caller asked him if it were true that "the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years could fund Social Security as we know it today."

In the bloodless fashion that he has patented, Bennett said, "You know, one of the arguments in this book "Freakonomics" that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up ... But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could - if that were your sole purpose - you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.

"That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

Bennett, who postures as a champion of values, is one of a number of figures who are largely responsible for creating the multi-billion dollar illegal drug industry.

After he served as President Reagan's education secretary, Bennett volunteered to become George Bush the Elder's drug "czar."

It may be a surprise to some people born in, say, the last thirty years to know that major drug abuse is a relatively new problem. It's a product of drug prohibition and punitive enforcement.

Marijuana wasn't outlawed until the year my mother was 20, and even after that it wasn't rigorously enforced. Not until the Nixon administration did Congress get serious about pouring massive resources into crackdowns, and that policy died with Nixon's resignation. President Ford dropped it, and President Carter didn't revive it until the later stages of his administration. Since then there have been unbroken tough enforcement under every president, Democratic and Republican.

When Bennett took over the White House drug office, he wanted to promote what he called "values." This means that drug use could not be treated as a health problem, which it is.

Instead, it had to be a battle between good and evil, with drug users considered criminals and health care professionals considered accessories. Bennett preached kicking kids out of school for using drugs, a surefire way of creating criminals. He counseled against blaming drug use on "poverty and racism - which help to breed and spread the contagion of drug use." It was self-contradictory, but so it went.

The tough approach fell most heavily on those least able to protect themselves, such as poor pregnant women (who were prosecuted for child abuse if they took drugs) and African Americans. Bennett and his cronies pursued policies that have nearly destroyed the black family in the U.S. by leaving tens of thousands of households with no fathers (there are heavier penalties for drugs used by blacks than those used by whites), even as Bennett has preached about the value of family.

And when all else failed, Bennett simply lied to make the problem seem urgent, as when he claimed that use "of the most harmful drugs is increasing" after seven years of declining drug use. (In a book-length attack on Bill Clinton, values champion Bennett wrote that, "if a man's word means nothing, it means nothing," whatever that means.)

The lure of the forbidden is the best sales pitch, and the nation is saddled with a drug problem it never had before drug prohibition. Punitive policies supported by Bennett and company have created a gargantuan multi-billion international market and plenty of drug warlords to supply it. If, as Bennett says, black kids grow up to be criminals, it is because he helped create a criminal industry that provides them with work.

Myers is a veteran capital reporter. His column, "Against the Grain," appears here on Wednesdays.

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