THE COLLATERAL DAMAGE FROM THE WAR ON DRUGS IS TOO HIGH

As executive director of the Justice Development Commission and senior
policy advisor to the provincial attorney general during the 1970s, I
became familiar with the strategies employed by the United States and
supporting interests within Canada to promote the "drug war."

By the late 1960s, it had become clear to anyone who was paying attention
that the draconian measures being proposed to control distribution and
sale, as well as punish and rehabilitate users, could only lead to personal
suffering and increases in crime at the street level while creating the
conditions of poverty, dislocation and danger at the national and
international level that are associated with any armed conflict.

Many people with intimate knowledge of these issues have been publicly
protesting for decades and often have suffered significant damage to their
personal reputations and careers for doing so.

My own work in B.C. during the push within Canada to implement the Narcotic
Control Act and, closer to home, the Heroin Treatment Plan, provided
personal experience with the treatment of dissenters. In later years, I
was able to understand the force of U.S. power in this area while working
as a consultant with policy analysts on drug law enforcement in Colombia.

This war is not about drugs, but drugs are an important and deadly armament
within it.

John W. Ekstedt
New Westminster

QUANTUM SHIFT LIKELY

"We are going to kill you if you continue to give speeches on legalizing
heroin."

This was the Mafia threat telephoned to me in my Moana hotel room in 1952.
I had delivered a series of talks about taking the profit out of heroin to
Kiwanis clubs in the Hawaiian Islands.

The media gave much coverage to the theory that continuing the illegal
status of addictive drugs would allow the crime syndicate (there was only
one Mafia then) to recruit vast numbers to use heroin.

There were only 10,000 addicts then in Canada, half of them in Vancouver.
Since 1952, the number of addicts has, as predicted, ballooned. Even
governments have been corrupted in the zealous greed for greater and
greater sales.

The good news is that there is likely to be a quantum shift. Hundreds of
public figures have demanded an end to the drug illegality that creates the
problem. Politicians can now safely vote to end this corrupting
prohibition without fear of losing their seats.

Ron MacIsaac
Victoria

VANDU PROVIDES LIFESAVING SERVICES TO DRUG USERS

The Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users receives only $118,000 from the
Vancouver/Richmond Health Board, not the $300,000 cited in the Aug. 31
article, "Planned safe-injection site faces opposition in area."

VANDU is a non-profit organization which provides lifesaving services to
drug-users. Its members are primarily drug-users or former users.

They operate according to the harm reduction model, a set of practical and
proven strategies with the goal of meeting drug users on their own
territory to help them reduce harm associated with their drug use. Their
noble activities include: peer-support and education; street patrols
(cleaning dirty needles off streets and watching for people who may need
medical attention); hospital visits (providing moral support and essentials
like clean underwear and razors); and methadone support-groups.

Vancouver has the highest rate of drug-use and drug-associated health
problems, including HIV and hepatitis, in Canada. The latest scientific
evidence has proven that drug addiction should be approached as a treatable
biopsychosocial disease, but the recent War on Drugs has left a chasm of
distrust between drug-users and public officials that makes appropriate
treatment difficult to impossible. VANDU is in a unique position to access
drug-users whom physicians and other health-professionals cannot reach.

Alana Hirsh, MD
Vancouver

PROHIBITION RESULTS IN 'COLLATERAL DAMAGE'

Two enthusiastic thumbs way, way up for printing Dan Gardner's series on
the Americans' lunatic Drug Wars.

The ghastly fact is that this bloody, futile attempt at prohibition results
annually in the "collateral damage", right here in Vancouver, of hundreds
of deaths among the drug-using population, and the loss of scores of
millions of dollars in property theft and damage.

In the absence of ridiculously punitive legal sanctions drug use would once
again become what it used to be; for most, an occasional recreation
considerably less risky than cigarette smoking, or any of a variety of
currently popular "extreme" sports; for a few, a source of ongoing
inconvenient but not terribly debilitating dependence; and, for a very few,
an illness requiring treatment and therapy.

Yet we seem incapable of escaping the throes of Drug War madness. Downtown
Eastside merchants and residents are whipped into apoplectic rage at the
mere suggestion of such rational and compassionate expedients as safe
injection sites. They clamour for the stern maintenance of those laws and
policies which serve principally to succour rampant crime, individual rot
and social barbarism in their own neighbourhood.

It is perhaps the blackest comedy of our times.

Ross Harvey
Vancouver

U.S. POLITICIANS IN TRAFFICKERS' POCKETS?

Since American politics are largely about money, the simplest answer to why
U.S. politicians continue to wage a nonsensical war on drugs is that their
campaign contributors pay them to do it. The people who have both the
strongest motivation to keep drugs illegal are those who profit most from
the trade; the growers and traffickers.

Al Capone bought politicians; why wouldn't today's drug barons?

Matt Hughes
Comox

BIG BUST WILL LEAD TO MORE CRIME

Police have seized $248 million of heroin. Junkies get 10 cents on the
dollar for stolen goods. So the police have prevented millions of dollars
in thefts from homes, cars and businesses. Right?

Wrong! The big bust will create a shortage of heroin. Street price will
possibly double to $70 per cap. Junkies need their fix at any price, so
they will now steal twice as much to buy drugs.

Instead of burning the confiscated dope, why not give it away free to the
junkies in a controlled environment? This would eliminate property crimes,
destroy the profit factor for other dealers and give us all a break from
the social cost of heroin addiction.

The plan would even provide opportunites to rehabilitate the junkies who
would have time to deal with health and personal issues since they would no
longer be employed as full-time thieves.

John Allen
Harrison