DRUG WAR HAS BEEN COSTLY FAILURE FOR DECADES

There is a killer loose in Harris County, Texas. There have been 60
overdose deaths there in June and July of this year compared to 5 last year.

Now in August, another 15 in one weekend.

Even though the killer stalks in every neighborhood in the country, we're
unlikely to identify the killer correctly.

Most will say the culprit is drugs, but in truth it is a drug war whose
results have always been the opposite of its intentions.

The deaths will wear the label "drug related" when they are really
prohibition related, a byproduct of the abdication of responsibility by the
government to strictly regulate dangerous drugs.

Our surrender of control of the drug supply to criminals has caused wave
after wave of disaster.

Nationwide, "drug related" deaths have soared from around 2,000 annually
over 20 years ago to almost 16,000 last year. The government calls this
"success."

We should have learned this lesson from alcohol Prohibition when reported
deaths from poisoned liquor leaped from 1,064 in 1920 to 4,154 in 1925, and
tens of thousands more went blind or were paralyzed. But we haven't.

Meanwhile in Switzerland some 1,000 heroin addicts have been given pure
heroin for over 5 years by the government with zero overdose deaths in the
g roup.

This duplicates results seen in Shreveport from 1919 to 1923 when a similar
policy was followed.

In both cases, most of the addicts were able to better manage their
addictions to such a degree that they were also normally employed even
though addicted.

On the whole, heroin addicts can function better than alcohol addicts and
any tendency toward violence is suppressed rather than exaggerated as with
excessive alcohol consumption.

Addicts often recover to reenter society as productive members with no
apparent signs of their previous addiction. Not one has returned from a coffin.

Resistance to examining such alternatives is partly based on Chicken Little
cries that change will equal more addiction.

It wasn't true in Shreveport and it isn't true in Switzerland. And there is
no evidence that the drug war does anything to limit use or addiction
despite government claims.

Certainly the drugs are more available than ever and the notion that fear
of prison must produce the desired result should have been shattered by the
recent report of the government's primary analysts, the National Research
Council:

" In summary, existing research seems to indicate that there is little
apparent relationship between severity of sanctions prescribed for drug use
and prevalence or frequency of use, and that perceived legal risk explains
very little in the variance of individual drug use."

But the NRC report challenges drug war orthodoxy, so you're not likely to
hear about it from the national media.

Many drug war supporters are as addicted to this war, and as much in
denial, as any drug addict; they believe the answer lies in more of the
same thing that got them in trouble in the first place.

Government must be held accountable for decades of costly failure. But it
will never happen until citizens innoculate themselves against political
propaganda through education.

Demanding open hearings, debate and discussion would be a start.

Jerry Epstein is the president of the Drug Policy Forum of Texas (DPFT). He
invites interested readers to visit their Web site at www.dpft.org or to
phone (888) 511-DPFT for information.