REGULATE DRUGS, DON'T BAN THEM

To the editor:

Re: "Current Strategies no fix
to Ottawa's drug abuse problem,"
Kourier-Standard, May 16.

There is a middle ground between drug prohibition and blanket
legalization. Switzerland's heroin maintenance program has been shown
to reduce disease, death and crime among chronic users.

Providing addicts with standardized doses in a clinical setting
eliminates many of the problems associated with heroin use.

Addicts would not be sharing needles if not for zero tolerance laws
that restrict access to clean syringes, nor would they be committing
crimes if not for artificially inflated black market prices.

Heroin maintenance pilot projects are underway in Canada, Germany,
Spain and the Netherlands.

If expanded, prescription heroin maintenance would deprive organized
crime of a core client base.

This would render illegal heroin trafficking unprofitable and spare
future generations addiction.

Marijuana should be taxed and regulated like alcohol, only without the
ubiquitous advertising.

Separating the hard and soft drug markets is critical.

As long as marijuana distribution is controlled by organized crime,
consumers of the most popular illicit drug will continue to come into
contact with sellers of addictive drugs like cocaine and heroin.

Given that marijuana is arguably safer than legal alcohol - the plant
has never been shown to cause an overdose death - it makes no sense to
waste scarce resources on failed policies that finance organized crime
and facilitate hard drug use.

Drug policy reform may send the wrong message to children, but I like
to think the children are more important than the message.

Robert Sharpe

Policy anaylyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy