Television Reviews : Moralistic Tone to ABC’s ‘Drugs: Why This Plague?’

America is the largest marijuana and cocaine market in the world, ABC reminds us in “Drugs: Why This Plague?” (tonight at 8 on Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42). Each year we spend three times as much on illegal drugs ($140 billion) as we do on imported oil. About 40 million Americans use drugs. About 2 million are addicts.

Why do so many Americans use drugs? And what can be done to cure what ABC calls this “plague” upon our land?

ABC, host Peter Jennings and reporters from ABC affiliates try to honor their promise to answer these questions in tonight’s program, which is a sequel of sorts to “Drugs: A Plague Upon the Land,” an earlier ABC report that crisscrossed America to detail the damage done to society by the using, abusing and selling of illegal drugs.

We’re shown the whole grim scene, from inner-city kids with $200 bags of “crack” cocaine to stockbrokers making buys in Seattle and police making busts in Dallas. We’re told shocking stories about 10-year-old coke addicts. In addition to a little history about our national legacy as drug users, we learn how drugs create highs in the brain and see how some individuals, community groups and governments are winning localized battles in the war against drugs.

Though this zippy, well-intentioned hour--produced by Stuart Schwartz--contains plenty of useful if too often overgeneralized information, you get the feeling the whole show could’ve been ghostwritten by Nancy Reagan.

No one’s asking for arguments for recreational drug use, but the tone of “Drugs” is too moralistic and paternalistic. Drugs are demonized. Drug users are generally depicted as unwitting victims--of poverty, of illiteracy, of a culture whose advertising and entertainment media have glamorized all kinds of drugs (including alcohol) and made them a normal part of American life.

It’s understandable that a conservative TV network would never consider the heretical thought that millions of drug users might actually enjoy taking drugs. Or that some could use them responsibly without becoming addicts. Or--Timothy Leary forbid--that maybe adults should actually be allowed to take drugs in a free society.

Less easy to excuse, however, is that “Drugs” never finds time to discuss legalization or decriminalization of drug use as alternatives to an endlessly escalating war on drug suppliers--a war that Jennings acknowledges is not being won now despite massive amounts of money and manpower.

A growing number of responsible public officials (including Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke) now argue that we should legalize drugs (which would take the profit away and end much of the deadly criminal activity that surrounds illegal drug distribution). The money we’re spending on enforcement would be used to treat drugs as a health problem, not a criminal problem.

It’s an increasingly less radical idea that deserves to be included in a documentary that purports to offer serious solutions to an important social problem. Unfortunately, though, “Drugs” is a little too involved in crusading for a drug-free America to engage in a genuinely enlightening analysis.