DRUG WAR EXAGGERATIONS

In a recent editorial published by The Sun, Family Research Council
member Robert L. Maginnis asserted that "last year, in the United States
alone, more citizens died of illegal drug overdoses than were murdered."

This statement is not true and represents typical drug war propaganda
and hyperbole.

It appears as though the drug warriors are getting desperate as the
nation finally wakes up and realizes that drug war policies -- which gut
the Bill of Rights, incarcerate non-violent offenders in huge numbers
and at great cost, and criminalize people who are otherwise decent and
productive citizens -- have utterly failed to reduce the quantity,
quality or cost of drugs on our streets.

Maginnis most likely is basing his false assertion on the statements of
our own Orlando congressman, John Mica. In September, Mica released a
statement to the press asserting that drug overdoses in the United
States now exceed murders.

Doug McVay, a research analyst with Common Sense for Drug Policy (
http://www.csdp.org ), disproved this assertion with the Centers for
Disease Control's National Vital Statistics Reports, Volume 48, No. 11,
published July 24. (The report is available online at
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/releases/00newsfinaldeath98.htm.)

This report indicates there were "18,272 deaths from homicide and legal
intervention" and "16,926 deaths from drug-induced causes." For CDC
purposes, "drug-induced causes" includes "not only deaths from dependent
and non-dependent use of drugs (legal and illegal use), but also
poisoning from medically prescribed and other drugs."

This report clearly shows it is impossible to claim that more people
died from illegal drug overdoses than from murders, as stated in the
Maginnis editorial. Only by combining illegal drug overdoses with all
the other categories of drug deaths, and then comparing that figure with
a murder statistic lower than the one presented by the CDC -- Mica got
the lower murder figure from an FBI report -- could the congressman and
people like Maginnis make such a patently false assertion.

So once again we see that truth is the first casualty in war.

Maginnis' use of false statistics is typical of many drug warriors. We
have seen similar distortions and outright lies about the war on drugs
at the national, state and local levels on numerous occasions.

Our own state "drug czar" James McDonough was caught grossly
exaggerating the so-called "club drug" death rate in Florida. A Florida
Department of Law Enforcement spokesman at the Alachua County Drug
Summit falsely asserted that ecstasy was more widely used in the United
States than marijuana. The Gainesville Police Department was caught
presenting bogus statistics to the Gainesville City Commission during
the "anti-rave" debacle here in town.

This begs the question, why do the drug warriors feel the need to
participate in these distortions, exaggerations and outright lies?

The problem with these false statistics and statements is they tend to
take on a life of their own and get repeated ad nauseum by media sources
like yours. These falsehoods negatively impact public policy debates
that should -- no matter what one's views may be on the issue -- be
based on factual information.

May I suggest that in the future you view all statistics and statements
presented by people with a demonstrated penchant for distorting the
truth with at least a bit of skepticism, and that perhaps you do some
fact-checking of your own before running these pro-drug war propaganda
pieces?

Some people here in Gainesville may still believe everything they read
in your paper.