USE, ABUSE, ADDICTION AREN'T THE SAME THING

In her article Darryl Strawberry's other stats of March 5, Susan Aschoff
uses "drug use," "drug abuse" and "drug addiction" almost interchangeably.
This inadvertent blurring prevents rational discussion of drug policy.

The same blurring happened in the early 20th century. The Anti-Saloon League
convinced our parents and grandparents that prohibition (of alcohol use)
would stamp out drunkenness (abuse) and alcoholism (addiction). No attempt
was made to assess each of them according to its social damage and its
probable cost of prevention.

By the time Americans realized that national prohibition had failed, it had
cost us thousands of deaths, hundreds of thousands of blindings and
paralysis and the credibility of the federal criminal justice system. This
noble experiment officially ended after only 13 years, when the 18th
Amendment to the Constitution was repealed.

We are now engaged in another experiment rooted in the same fuzzy thinking
that we can stop abuse and addiction by stopping use. It has gone on with
vigor but without success since 1973. Our criminal justice system has
self-corrupted to an ethic where the end justifies any means, even the
destruction of our basic freedoms.

It is said that a problem well defined is 90 percent solved. We can define
today's drug problem only with an understanding of how the fuzzy thinking of
the early 20th century preordained the failure of prohibition.

John Chase
Palm Harbor