MIDDLE GROUND SOUGHT IN 'HOLY WAR' ON DRUGS

Drug prohibition often does more harm than good, legalizing drugs is risky,
and the best policy may lie somewhere between the two extremes, a
California law professor told a conference in Vancouver Friday.

Robert MacCoun, who teaches law and public policy at the University of
California at Berkeley, said proponents of prohibition and legalization
often treat the issue like a holy war.

"Both sides conduct the debate as if it's a debate about religious
doctrine," said MacCoun, co-author Drug War Heresy: An Agnostic Look at the
Legalization Debate. "And certain things are heretical to the hawks and
certain things are heretical to the doves.

"In the U.S., the debate is focused on two extremes...as if there's nothing
in between. In fact, it is not clear at all to us that either of those
models is a particularly good model and there are a whole range of options."

MacCoun said European countries have shown it is possible to tackle the
problem by reducing drug use and the harm it causes - even in a country
where drugs are still prohibited.

He cited a Swiss program in which registered addicts can receive the drug
from government clinics.

MacCoun, who opened the two-day symposium on illegal drug use, said
prohibition escalates the price of illegal drugs and fuels property crime
as addicts steal to feed their habit. "The violence we see in street-level
drug markets is almost entirely due to prohibition."

But MacCoun said that while legalizing drugs would curtail such problems,
it also could increase the total harm to society by expanding the number of
drug users.

"We do argue that it is quite possible that commercial access to drugs that
are currently illegal in the United States would lead to increases in the
use of those drugs," he said. "So commercial forms of legalization are
risky strategies."