U.S. DRUG POLICY FAILING, REPORT SAYS

WASHINGTON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. policy of outlawing
recreational drugs and actively going after those who use them is
failing to protect users, with deaths and illness due to overdoses
increasing, a report published on Monday finds.

Despite declines in drug use, visits to hospital emergency rooms
related to cocaine and heroin use have increased sharply, Ernest
Drucker of the Montefiore Medical Centre in New York said.

"The cure has only worsened the disease," Drucker wrote in a report in
the journal Public Health Reports.

Drucker analysed 25 years worth of government studies and said the
"war on drugs" was responsible for growing social ills that were once
blamed on the drugs themselves.

"Drugs can certainly cause harm, but our selective application of
punitive drug prohibition laws is at least as dangerous," he said.

Criminalizing drugs forced users to turn to crime, he said. Backs and
other minorities were the biggest victims.

He said while blacks and Hispanics are no more likely to use illegal
drugs than whites are, blacks are 3.5 times as likely to die of
drug-related overdoses as whites and visit the emergency room more
than seven times as often.

African-Americans were four times as likely as whites to be arrested
for drug offences, he wrote, calling the unequal treatment
destabilising and dangerous to society.

A report issued earlier on Monday found that children of parents who
abuse drugs and alcohol are not getting enough help from welfare services.

The study by the Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University found the number of abused or neglected children has more
than doubled, from 1.4 million in 1986 to more than three million in
1997.