DRUG WAR A FAILURE

Re: Leo Knights, July 19 column, Free drugs for addicts would be Kwan's folly.

Acknowledging the failure of the drug war is not tantamount to admitting defeat. Likewise, attempting to redress this failure does necessarily entail the outright legalization of all drugs. We've tried zero tolerance, with little to show for it. Criminalizing public health problems drives them underground and makes them harder to treat. If drinking alcohol were a felony pursued with zero-tolerance zeal the turnout at AA meetings would be dramatically lower, for obvious reasons. The drug warriors riding the anti-drug gravy train need to step aside and allow policies based on pragmatism replace the counterproductive preaching of the past three decades.

By registering hard drug addicts and providing standardized doses in a treatment setting, the public health problems associated with addiction could be eliminated. For example, the high prevalence of HIV among intravenous drug users is a direct result of zero-tolerance drug policies that prohibit the sale of needles. If able to purchase drugs at cost instead of inflated black market prices, addicts would no longer need to commit crimes to feed their habits. More important, organized crime would lose a lucrative client base. This would render illegal drug trafficking unprofitable, destroy the black market and thereby spare future generations the horror of addiction. This harm reduction plan may sound defeatist, but if permanently protecting future generations from hard drugs is defeat, I for one am willing to surrender.

Robert Sharpe

Students for Sensible Drug Policy

George Washington University

Washington, DC USA