One of the most striking anomalies of the 1990s is that America seems to be making significant progress in the war on crime, but not in the war on drugs. What little comfort can be found in the statistics on drug use is attributable to changing tastes on the streets, as crack gives way to smack and the peddlers change turf or tactics.

Unfortunately, the national debate on drug policy is mired in the same kind of formalistic ruts that used to characterize the politics of crime generally. The moral vacuity of the decriminlizers is matched by the intellectual vacuity of the just-say-no set. One side screams for more treatment, the other side for more punishment, while efforts to interrupt the supply of drugs from overseas appears to lead to one blind alley after another.

What's needed is a new idea on fighting drugs. In the Progressive Policy Institute's 1997 book, Building the Bridge: 10 Big Ideas to Transform America, PPI promoted UCLA Professor Mark Kleiman's proposal for "coerced abstinence": intensive supervision and treatment of people in the criminal justice system for drug abuse, supported by increasing sanctions for failure to "get clean." Coerced abstinence is based on the recognition of the extremely high correlation of substance abuse with criminal behavior, and the common-sense hypothesis that concentrating drug testing and treatment on probationers, prisoners and parolees could reduce both drug use and crime without doing violence to civil liberties. Coerced abstinence also supplies a logical alternative sentence for first-time or small-time criminals with drug problems -- with the prospect of time in the pokey as the "stick" for staying clean -- and a sound method for ensuring the ability of ex-cons to re-enter legitimate society, at least in those jurisdictions that have not bought the short-sighted conservative policy of eliminating parole, thus eliminating supervision of former prisoners.

Finally, a New Democrat elected official, Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, has persuaded her state to give coerced abstinence its first large-scale test. Beginning this July, about 24,000 probationers and parolees who have been ordered into drug treatment programs will become subject to drug testing on an average of twice a week. Schedules of escalating punishments for non-compliance, concluding with hard time in prison, are being prepared.

Townsend told the National Journal recently that coerced abstinence was a way to "break out of the paralyzing debate between 'Do we need more treatment?' and 'Do we need more punishment?' We say, 'Both.'" The war on drugs, and the war on crime, should both benefit from her willingness to find a "third way."