FAILED DRUG POLICIES AND THE HEROIN GLUT

Editor -- Last week, The Chronicle reported breathlessly on the
phenomenon of increased heroin use by the ``young, middle- and
upper-middle class-kids like the 21-year-old son of blues rocker Boz
Scaggs'' (``Young, Rich And Strung Out,'' Chronicle, January 9). They
also reported that the price of heroin in the Bay Area has fallen so
dramatically that a heroin high is not much more expensive than ``a
six-pack of beer.''

What they failed to report is that the heroin glut isn't limited to
the Bay Area, or even the United States; it's global and occurring
despite record budgets for such never-proven concepts as ``drug
interdiction'' and ``source country control,'' or more recently
appropriated extra billions to Madison Avenue for ``demand reduction''
ads.

Heroin overdose deaths have been setting records from Sydney to
Glasgow and points in between, including Vancouver. B.C., and Plano,
Texas, as well as here in San Francisco.

The glut should be seen as another convincing indicator of the failure
of prohibition; instead it will be cited by demagogues in Washington
as an urgent reason for taxpayers to pour more billions down the drug
war rat-hole, for beefed-up police forces to send more poor people to
prison, and for newspapers like The Chronicle to write more uncritical
drug scare stories -- free advertising for the lucrative criminal
market created by a witless policy.

TOM O'CONNELL, M.D.
San Mateo