DRUG STUDY MISCONSTRUED

I read in the Aug. 20 Register-Guard an Associated Press article
headlined "Tougher drug laws working, study finds."

Since the purpose of our drug laws is to fight the drug war, I took
the headline to mean that we are finally making positive progress in
controlling drug use and abuse. However, when I read the article, it
talked of the increase in federal drug offenses and how many more
convictions had been obtained. That's no more an indication of
success than increasing body counts were during the Vietnam War. It
simply means more people are getting caught, which probably means a
lot more people are getting into the business, hoping to participate
in the obscene profits. So I decided that the original text upon
which the article was based might be the basis for the headline, that
it might tell me that drugs were no longer more easily available at a
lower cost and greater purity than ever before. But no, the article
was more of the same, only longer and with greater detail.

Finally I went to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report,
upon which the article was based, and read all 12 pages. Not one
sentence indicated that tougher drug laws are reducing the harm done
by the combination of our current drug policies and the drugs they're
supposed to control. At this point, I decided to see how other papers
handled their headlines for the same piece. I located 18 other
publications across the nation that had picked up on it. None had a
headline anywhere near the bias of The Register-Guard. They were all
factual.

The Register-Guard's headline belonged on the editorial page, but
even there it would have been wrong.

TERRY LIITTSCHWAGER
Walterville