OUR TOUGH POLICY ON DRUGS ONLY HURTS SOCIETY

CONGRATULATIONS on your Sunday Times editorial (September 17, p.14).

It most eloquently raises the three key issues in the current debate on
heroin and its illegality.

First, it is, as you say, "a complex health issue, not merely a
law-and-order issue".

The latter conception is entirely self-imposed, almost a self-inflicted
wound, one might say, where society chooses to damage itself by insisting
that the substance be high-priced, cut with a range of dangerous additives
and of variable purity.

Secondly, you emphasise that Justice Miles, and other judges, see the
"consequences of its illegality every day". It is intriguing to think about
how the justice system might be improved if it had time to concentrate
solely on those crimes which hurt other people rather than on those which
hurt the "perpetrators" themselves.

Thirdly, you most movingly emphasise in your last paragraph the humanity of
those caught up in heroin addiction.

This is not to say that addicts do not commit crimes, scams and personal
betrayals in the course of their fund-raising, but it does bring up again
the issue of why the price of heroin has to be so high and why it can only
be supplied by dealers who are more concerned with compensating themselves
for risks taken than for their clients' welfare.

GEOFF PAGE
Narrabundah