LAST CHANCE

Rehab rather than jail: I wish to commend you on a true and realistic
account of the way things happen with regard to drug addicts ["Tough on
Drugs," by Margaret Downing, December 14]. I'm one of the people that has
spent, off and on, the last ten years in and out of jails, treatment
programs, halfway houses and prison. I've been in the Harris County jail
since September 1999 for possession of cocaine.

I live a vicious cycle. I get out of jail, and everything falls into place
like any normal person's life. I get a good job, a place to live, a
girlfriend and all the other things associated with a sober life. You see,
my life doesn't have to be going in a bad direction or having any kind of
trouble for me to use drugs. It's when my life is going great that the
demon in me becomes uncontrollable, and in a matter of days I lose
everything I've worked so hard for.

Yes. I've lied, stolen, cheated and anything else you can imagine because
of drugs. I keep hoping it's something I'm going to grow out of, but my
addiction lies dormant during my incarceration. They say that while you're
locked up your addiction is doing push-ups and working out so when the
chains are removed it's stronger than ever.

I wish more judges were like Krocker. However, most don't believe in
treatment, they believe in prison. I'm being considered for parole, which
means maybe I'm to start the cycle one last time. There are no more
chances. Either I stay straight, or next time I'm going to spend the rest
of my life in prison. I'm hoping this time I don't become a product of the
great state of Texas's judicial system like many before me. I truly enjoy
the Houston Press for its real issues with real people.

Vincent Mancuso
Houston

NARCOTIC NOSTALGIA

It's long past time to pretend that drug prohibition is doing anything
worthwhile about drug addiction. Especially when drug users are usually
able to function quite well when they are left to tend their own business.
Nearly all of the harm to drug users comes from an illiterate drug policy
invented in a horse-and-buggy era by people who believed phrenology was a
sure test of intelligence and moral integrity.

America's lunatic drug crusaders claim the sky will fall if we legalize
drugs, but they cannot explain why no one was robbing, whoring and
murdering over drugs when addicts could buy all of the heroin, cocaine,
morphine, opium and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the
corner pharmacy. When drugs were legal, addicts held regular employment,
raised decent families and were indistinguishable from their teetotaling
neighbors.

We now have prisons overflowing with drug users, and hundreds of thousands
of shattered families. The addiction rate is now five times greater than
when we had no laws at all, and 17-year-olds are the fastest-growing group
of heroin users. So much for getting tough on drugs.

It's time to relegate America's misguided drug policy to the same oblivion
that alcohol prohibition was consigned to when we finally admitted the
noble experiment could never work.

Redford Givens
San Francisco, California