AMERICA'S WAR ON DRUGS A FAILURE

To the Cigar,

Noel Marandola is correct about drug prohibition - it is a cruel and
worthless policy. [Editor's note: Marandola wrote the letter to the
editor "SSDP rallies support for medical marijuana" in yesterday's issue.]

America's drug crusaders perpetrate the illiterate attitudes
responsible for a drug crusade that causes a hundred, nay a thousand
times, the damage done by the drugs themselves. Demanding life
destroying prison sentences for a crime where there are no victims is
morally reprehensible. Especially when we learn that there was no
such thing as "drug crime" before the drug warriors put their
prohibition laws on the books.

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 costs less than tobacco addiction (50c per week in 1910) and
"drug crime" was unknown. The term "drug crime" is an invention of
prohibitionists trying to cover the effects of their failed drug policy.

A 1994 U.S. Department of Justice study revealed that "Illegal drugs
and violence are linked primarily through drug marketing: disputes
among rival distributors, arguments and robberies involving buyers
and sellers, property crimes committed to raise drug money and, more
speculatively, social and economic interactions between the illegal
markets and the surrounding communities ... alcohol is the only
[psychoactive substance] whose consumption has been shown to commonly
increase aggression"

Unintentional opiate overdose deaths were extremely rare before drugs
were outlawed. Most drug 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.

After 92 straight years of failure, no informed person can still
think there is any virtue in a lunatic drug crusade. Rather than
saving people from dangerous drugs, America's drug war exposes
everyone to a dangerous criminal black market that functions in the
shadows of every city in the United States.

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, Hep 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.

America's drug crusade has not achieved similar success using jail
cells to treat addicts in Rhode Island 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

Webmaster DRCNet

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