DRUG USE NOT A VICTIMLESS CRIME

It looks as if the St. Petersburg Times has bought lock, stock and
barrel the arguments of the drug culture in their efforts to soften
drug policy. You misrepresent what has actually happened in countries
that soften drug policy.

In Australia, the lifetime drug use in adolescents is 52 percent,
compared with 9 percent in Sweden, a country with restrictive drug
policy. Dependent heroin users under age 20 are five times more
prevalent in Australia.

In Holland, the use of marijuana in adolescents increased 142 percent
from 1990 to 1995, and crime has skyrocketed. Since marijuana
enforcement was softened, marijuana use overall doubled. The country
has become a haven for drug users from around the world.

Canada has plunged headlong into softening of drug policy. The fallout
from this misguided policy is staggering. Vancouver is an excellent
example. Before softening drug policy, HIV prevalence in addicts was 2
percent. It is now more than 27 percent. Canada has embraced the
medical-excuse marijuana movement as well as industrial hemp without
careful study and while ignoring solid evidence against such folly.
Farmers who started trying to market hemp were left with huge
surpluses and no hemp market.

The Swiss changes in drug policy have been abominable. The heroin
"handout" that has been undertaken has no independent evaluation of
HIV conversion, no drug testing to verify lack of using other drugs,
no independent assessment of criminal activity, and considers addicts
employed if they only marginally participate in employment activities.
The Swiss tried to allow legal heroin use in a central needle park a
few years back, but they had to close it because the violence and drug
use in the surrounding area was terrible. Now, to add to their drug
policy failures, they are legalizing marijuana.

We have seen terrible failures of soft drug policy within our own
borders. When Alaska had legal marijuana, pot use among adolescents
was more than twice as prevalent as in the rest of the country.
Baltimore has been considered a model for soft, "harm reduction"
policy. It now has some of the most serious crime and drug problems in
the country. During the late 1970s, 13 states decriminalized or
legalized marijuana. Not surprisingly, marijuana use was about twice
as prevalent in adolescents then as compared to today. The ultimate
fallout of soft drug policy is an increase in drug use among young
people and increases in crimes committed under the influence of drugs.
We have made huge gains by continuing a restrictive drug policy, which
seeks aggressive enforcement, treatment and primary prevention efforts.

Drug use is not a victimless event. It spills into all walks of life.
Many who seek the softening of drug policy do so for personal gain or
to allow their own use. When you hear individuals expounding support
of soft drug policy, consider that they are either ignorant of the
facts or they are choosing to intentionally ignore them.

Eric A. Voth, chairman, The Institute on Global Drug Policy, St.
Petersburg

MORE SUBSTANCES TO MESS US UP

You have to be kidding me about legalizing drugs. Your justification
is to save what, the $6- to $10-billion dollars we spend on
incarceration and law enforcement? Do you have any comprehension, any
idea, what alcoholism costs this country year after year?

Not only is it in probably in the hundreds of billions of dollars in
crime, auto accidents, lost time at work, health care, welfare, etc.,
but also destroyed relationships, divorces, abused and neglected
children and spouses, murders and violent aggression, and you want to
legalize and add other substances besides alcohol to screw up society?

What are you, nuts or on drugs?

William Saksefski, St. Petersburg