OUR FAILED DRUG POLICY

CHICAGO -- The article "Weak laws make ecstasy drug of choice" (Page
1, May 28) is perhaps the shallowest analysis of drug issues that I
have seen in recent memory. Printing a headline about a new drug
crisis may be a way to sell papers, but that does not excuse the
flawed reasoning offered by Eric Ferkenhoff and Jeff Coen in support
of the anomalous proposition that the harsh drug policies that have
failed to control traffic in other drugs will succeed in controlling
traffic in Ecstasy.

The authors suggest that drug experts generally concur that harsher
sentences are necessary to control Ecstasy use and the associated
harms. They certainly didn't ask anyone who is familiar with recent
data on the effect of laws against cocaine, heroin and marijuana. The
federal government's drug-control budget has increased from $9.7
billion in 1990 to $18.5 billion in 2000, and policies calling for
severe sentences for these drugs have had a major role in pushing the
number of Americans under control of our penal system to more than 2
million for the first time this March.

But have these policies dried up the supply of these drugs or ended
the associated harms? Of course not. The Year 2000 National Drug
Control Strategy Report of Barry McCaffrey's Office of National Drug
Control Policy shows that drug-related deaths are at an all-time high,
and "unprecedented retail purity and low prices in the United States
indicate that heroin is readily accessible." Average age of first use
of heroin has steadily declined in the recent past and new initiates
to cocaine have steadily risen.

Most recent statistics on marijuana use show it hovering at the
highest levels since the 1980s. And, here in Chicago, the number of
new AIDS cases traced to injection drug use topped 50 percent for the
first time in 1998 (the most recent year for which such data is available).

This is no success story.

The only research the authors of the article provide on the harms
associated with Ecstasy is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration's Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN) figure of
1,142 emergency-room episodes involving Ecstasy in 1998. Would we
really want to trade that figure for the one generated by our
get-tough sentencing policies against other drugs? As the same DAWN
report related, cocaine was reported in 172,014 emergency department
visits, heroin/morphine was reported in 77,645 visits, and
marijuana/hashish was reported in 76,870 visits.

The article also cites the recent overdose deaths of two teenagers in
the Chicago area in the litany of evidence ostensibly supporting
tougher sentences. As the authors note, however, these tragedies were
reportedly the result of teenagers mistakenly thinking they were
taking Ecstasy but instead taking a much more powerful drug. It should
come as no surprise that such mistakes happen in black market drug
transactions. Our resources would be better spent on realistic drug
education than on harsher penalties that serve only to reinforce the
illicit nature of the market that generated the problem.

The active ingredient in Ecstasy, MDMA, has been around since the
early 20th Century. Ecstasy has been in circulation as a club drug
since the 1970s, and trends in use have fluctuated over time since
then. It was incorporated into the criminal drug laws in the
mid-1980s, and there has been no recent change in the law concerning
Ecstasy or other street drugs that remotely suggests that weak laws
account for any current increase in the use of Ecstasy.

The popularity of drugs fluctuates in teen culture as does the
popularity of music, dress, hairstyles and just about everything else.
That does not mean that there is a crisis or that there is any problem
associated with weak laws. As for the increase in Ecstasy seizures by
the U.S. Customs Service, does it seem possible that it is in part due
to the fact, as the article notes, that the U.S. Customs Service and
Interpol have recently launched special teams to track the drug?

We need journalists and legislators who will have the courage to
rethink drug policies and replace the rhetoric of the war on drugs
with a pragmatic public health approach that will curtail the
financial burden on all of society and lessen the human burden on the
lives of those directly affected by drug abuse.

Mark Parts