MORE COULD BE DONE FOR ADDICTS

To the editor:

I read with much interest the Dec. 20 Viewpoints letter, "Anti-booze,
drugs parallels," about the failure of our current war on drugs.

There are no drug treatments, thus no real help even for the ones who
want another chance in life, all because our current policy is to just
simply lock everyone up for many years because a crime (although not
violent) is drug-related.

We have all these prisons, so the government will be trying to keep
them full in order to appear to be "tough on crime."

A compromise solution could be to give the ones with some hope a
chance for treatment while serving a much shorter sentence. This would
save billions of dollars each year.

If we gave out shorter sentences for "youthful indiscretions," the
government could maintain the present prison population of 2 million
and only add new ones after space became available via shorter
sentences for the nonviolent low-level offenders.

Many thousands are in prisons because of a snitch who lied in order to
get time cut short at the expense of some innocent person.

A lot more could be done.

WILLIAM R. BOMAN
Houston