DRUG LAWS CAUSE CRIME

To the editor:

Heroin addicts and their families are victims of a braindead drug
prohibition policy that has worse effects than heroin use by itself
could ever have ["A Heroin Diary," Nov. 4].

This is clearly seen by the undisputed fact that no one was robbing,
whoring and murdering over drugs when addicts could buy all of the
heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium and anything else they wanted cheaply
and legally at the corner pharmacy. When drugs were legal, addicts
held regular employment, raised decent families and were
indistinguishable from their teetotaling neighbors.

Overdoses were virtually unheard of when addicts used cheap pure Bayer
Heroin instead of the expensive toxic potions prohibition puts on the
streets. (See: The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs,
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm). In other
words, drug prohibition is either directly responsible for our so-called
"drug problems" or makes matters a hundred times worse. When narcotics were
legal Thomas R. Adamson's "heroin problem" would have had no more social
consequence than a tobacco addict's habit causes.

Drug prohibition destroys far more lives than it saves. Indeed, drug
prohibition laws are responsible for an abundance of crime and social
destruction that never occurred before the drug crusaders banned
personal drug use. It's time to stop destroying people's lives because
of drug addiction.

REDFORD GIVENS
San Francisco, CA