A BETTER WAY

To The Editor:

Tom Hedrick ("Point of View," June 17) claims the government's $185 million
ad campaign is a cost-effective means of reducing adolescent drug use.
Hedrick, of course, stands to benefit financially from this taxpayer-funded
campaign. With overdose deaths and incarceration rates at record levels,
Hedrick's claims that adolescent drug use has gone down (thanks to the ad
campaign) is dubious at best. Surveys that rely on self-reporting are
useless in this age of zero tolerance. Honesty could very well result in
drug-sniffing dogs and locker searches at school.

The costly drug war is part of the problem, not the solution. With alcohol
prohibition repealed, liquor producers no longer gun each down in drive-by
shootings, nor do consumers go blind drinking unregulated bathtub gin. The
crime, corruption and overdose deaths attributed to drugs are all direct
results of drug prohibition. Drug policies designed to protect children
have given rise to a thriving black market with no age controls. This is
not to say that all drugs should be legal.

The Netherlands has successfully reduced overall drug use by replacing
marijuana prohibition with regulation. Dutch rates of drug use are
significantly lower than U.S. rates in every category. Separating the hard
and soft drug markets and establishing age controls for marijuana has
proven more effective than zero tolerance. Although marijuana is relatively
harmless compared to alcohol -- pot has never been shown to cause an
overdose death -- marijuana prohibition is deadly.

Illegal marijuana provides the black market contacts that introduce youth
to addictive drugs like meth. This "gateway" is the direct result of a
fundamentally flawed policy. Taxing and regulating marijuana is a
cost-effective alternative to spending tens of billions annually on a
failed drug war.

Robert Sharpe
Washington, D.C.