SOUND, BALANCED POLICY LESSENS ILLEGAL DRUG USE

The St. Petersburg Times in its three-part series, U.S. versus them:
Challenging America's War on Drugs (July 29-31) offered a skewed
presentation of the facts to buttress the legitimacy of its "challenge."
The reporter's message, despite the barrel of ink invested in it, can be
reduced to the commonplace (but untrue) mantra: It's a war, the war has
failed; and the war does more harm than the drugs.

But facts are stubborn things, so let me point out a few. The efforts to
lower drug abuse combine prevention, education, treatment and law
enforcement. That is not a war, therefore, but a responsible and balanced
policy.

Nor are the counterdrug efforts failing.

What the articles did not report is that since 1980, drug use in the United
States has gone down from 14 percent to 6 percent of the population (a more
than 50 percent decline), that cocaine users have dropped from 5.7-million
to 1.7-million (about 70 percent) and that 90 percent of our children do
not use drugs.

In Florida, marijuana use among teens has gone down 36 percent, cocaine use
has gone down 66 percent, and inhalant use has gone down 19 percent since 1995.

Moreover, it is not the counterdrug policies that do the damage, but the
drugs themselves. The lost lives, destroyed families, ruined health and
social and economic degradation that drugs bring are tragic. The myth that
our prisons are full of otherwise unoffending drug users is just that: a
myth. Only 93 of the 70,000-plus inmates in Florida's prison system are
there for marijuana possession, and each of them is a repeat offender with
long rap sheets, which they plea bargained down.

What a pity that the Times approached the U.S. data with a jaundiced
attitude while embracing Swiss and Dutch data without hesitation, data that
many dispute.

Joseph Califano, for example, a former Cabinet official and currently the
Director of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University states that the policy of decriminalizing cannabis has wreaked
havoc on Dutch society.

He maintains that decriminalizing has led to increased drug use (especially
among children), increased crime and the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. Dr.
Robert DuPont, author of The Selfish Brain, a classic study of addiction,
states that legalization of drugs would greatly increase the drug using
population in the United States. Indeed, while drug use in America has been
going down, drug use (and the crime that goes with it) in both Holland and
Switzerland has been going up.

Too bad the Times let its thesis get in front of its facts.

But the fact remains that the American people reject illegal drug abuse
(and drug experimentation) as a social norm. We have and can continue to
lower drug abuse, but only with sound and balanced policy, not creative
journalism.

- -- James R. McDonough, director, Florida Office of Drug Control, Tallahassee