McCAFFREY IS AS BLINKERED ON DRUGS AS OUR PM

The less than insightful comment by the White House drug policy
director General Barry McCaffrey, that shooting galleries and heroin
trials are akin to "pouring alcohol into an alcoholic" (Herald, July
14) may well be in keeping with our Prime Minister's equally blinkered
views on this subject.

However, the reality for the vast majority of us who are neither
motivated by politics nor addicted to heroin is that our patience with
the endless cycle of crime perpetrated by hopeless addicts is nearing
its end.

Give the poor addicts their drugs for free and then they won't need to
steal from, bash and scheme against the rest of us.

Couple it with treatment and proper help and the results might be even
better.

I know I'm not alone in feeling minimal concern for those who choose
to waste their lives away in an opiate haze - that's their choice.

Surely it is time that governments stopped imposing the mammoth costs
of prohibitionism upon the rest of us under the overfed untruth that
our real concern is for the addicts.

Deep down we all know it isn't, nor should it be.

Simon Harvey,
Annandale