IT'S TIME WE TOOK A MORE PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO DRUG POLICY

Dear Sir,

It was only a matter of time before health professionals would
publicly advocate progressive drug policy as the pharmacists have in
seeking needle exchange [BDA Sun, Friday, February 2]. I bet that
their stand is based on witnessing suffering in the community and
scientific research-based evidence that their proposed solution
actually reduces suffering.

Great step in the right direction but a relatively small one since
other communities put needle exchange into practice decades ago.

I do hope that health officials will listen to and promote the BPA
proposal and that the minister will find support in Cabinet when he
takes the matter forward.

When the Bermuda Government follows this eminently sensible course
perhaps it will be in the mood to consider other progressive avenues,
which extend the rational and humane approach it started with
Alternatives To Incarceration (ATI).

Then it will move our drug policy further away from being in lock
step with the Americans, who we love, but who have implemented
disastrous drug policy.

The time has surely come to adopt an overall strategy of basing drug
policy on research-based, scientifically supported and humane action.

Look to the pragmatic actions of other governments. For a start,
recognize the vast differences between 'hard' and 'soft' drugs and
implement policy accordingly.

There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that if our children/youth
are experimenting with drugs, (and 75 per cent of Bermuda College
students apparently have) then we should greatly prefer them doing so
with pot than with methamphetamines or heroin or crack cocaine.

Yet our failed prohibition drug policies actually encourage 'hard'
drugs by making them as available, if not more so, than 'soft' drugs
(just as prohibition in the U.S. made hard liquor more available than
it ever has been since prohibition, while beer and wine could not be
found at all). No laws need to change, just policy. Just as the
Commissioner of Police sets the limit over which officers ticket
speeders, at say 50kph, so our Director of Public Prosecutions should
be encouraged to prosecute only those pot possession arrests
exceeding a certain limit, say an ounce. We have the power to stop
our youth from being put on the stop-list.

D. W. Robinson JP

St George's