NEGOTIATING TRAFFIC

I agree wholeheartedly with Nick Gillespie's editorial on Traffic ("The
Thirteenth Step," March) but would add one additional point. Most
liberal-minded folks agree that the drug war has been a colossal failure.
Nevertheless, these same people still think that "something" needs to be
done about drugs. For liberals, this "something" is stepping up emphasis on
treatment, instead of incarceration.

I regard Traffic as propaganda for this view. The viewer walks away from
the theater with the impression that the only approach that "works" is
treatment, especially 12-step programming, which was working for Michael
Douglas' daughter in the film. Never mind the statistics showing that
treatment doesn't have any better a track record than the criminal
approach. Drug use or abuse is largely a self-contained problem. Most
people outgrow it on their own, and are not harmed by using drugs,
including "hard" drugs like meth, coke, LSD, and heroin. Meanwhile, forcing
young people into abusive mind- control "treatment"-Alcoholics Anonymous,
Narcotics Anonymous, etc.-will harm a lot of people.

Lloyd Gaarder
Sioux Falls, SD

If everybody involved in the drug war debate studied the history of drug
use in the United States, they would quickly discover that there was never
any valid reason to outlaw drugs in the first place.

No one was robbing, whoring, and murdering over drugs when addicts could
buy all the heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium, and anything else they wanted
cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. When drugs were legal, addicts
held regular employment, raised decent families, and were indistinguishable
from their teetotaler neighbors. Overdoses were virtually unheard of when
addicts bought cheap, pure Bayer Heroin instead of the expensive toxic
potions prohibition put on the streets. (See the Consumers Union Report on
Licit and Illicit Drugs at www. druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/
cu/cumenu.htm.)

Drug crime was once unheard of. Now we have prisons overflowing with drug
users. The addiction rate is five times greater than when we had no drug
laws at all. These are the consequences of a lunatic drug prohibition
policy, not drug use.

Once we clearly understand that our preposterous drug crusade causes all of
our "drug problems," the wisdom of legalization becomes apparent. Whatever
problems remain will be much easier to deal with than the chaos we have now.

Redford Givens
San Francisco, CA

The public is so conditioned-even brainwashed-that it cannot distinguish
the danger of a drug's illegality from the danger of a drug's pharmacology.
This is the hand the film producer is dealt. If he wants to be taken
seriously, he cannot deviate far from that center. Steven Soderberg took a
small but necessary step toward educating the public and regaining sanity.
Next year, maybe another step.

John Chase
Palm Harbor, FL

Please explain that the "public health" position of some misguided
individuals is false. Typhoid, tuberculosis, polio, and other
"communicable" diseases are public health concerns. Your neighbor sitting
at home overindulging in pot-or alcohol or cheeseburgers, for that
matter-is not. No one ever caught "addiction." Addiction is a choice.
Taking drugs is a vice, not a crime or an illness. Drug use is a matter of
private morals and social values of no concern to "public health" officials
or any other therapeutic state moralizer.

Chris Buors
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Canada