LETTER OF THE WEEK

DRUG WAR WORSE THAN IRAQ

By Redford Givens

It is unfathomable that the country is bonkers over 3,000 U.S.
soldiers killed in Iraq since 2003, while ignoring an insane drug
crusade at home that directly murders more than 30,000 (overdoses)
every year. If all deaths caused by prohibition are added up, there
are more than 100,000 fatalities (HIV, hepatitis C, etc.) every year.

Drug prohibition is responsible for these needless deaths because
history clearly shows that unintentional opiate overdose deaths were
extremely rare before drugs were outlawed. Most drug-related deaths
before the Harrison Narcotic Act were suicides. Nowadays, Drug Czar
John Walters tells us there are more than 30,000 accidental drug
deaths every year. Since the fighting began in Iraq more than
300,000 American citizens have been murdered by a lunatic drug crusade.

No one was robbing, whoring and murdering to get drugs when addicts
could buy all of the heroin, morphine, cocaine and anything else they
wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. A legal heroin
habit cost less than tobacco addiction (25 cents per week in 1910)
and "drug crime" was unknown. The terms "drug crime" and "drug death"
are inventions of prohibitionists trying to cover the effects of
their failed drug policy.

Proof that hard-line American style drug prohibition causes drug
deaths and drug crimes comes from the Swiss Heroin Maintenance
Program where addicts are supplied with cheap, pure heroin and
cocaine. Overdose deaths and injection-transmitted diseases
(HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, etc.) are now a rarity in Switzerland. The
Swiss have not had a single overdose death in the program. Crime
among Swiss addicts has dropped 97 percent and the criminal drug
black market has vanished since the Swiss began providing addicts
with cheap, legal drugs. Swiss policy has resulted in an 82-percent
decrease in heroin addiction since 1990.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has not achieved similar success
using jail cells to treat addicts in Billings or anywhere in the
United States since 1914. Anyone truly concerned about the victims
of drugs will work to end an immoral, death-dealing drug crusade that
murders more than 30,000 people every year and spawns a multitude of
criminal activity.

Redford Givens

San Francisco

Pubdate - Thu, 21 Dec 2006

Source - Billings Outpost, The (MT)

Details - http://www.mapinc.org/media/2933

Referenced - http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1695/a06.html