On Campus FORUM TO DISCUSS DRUG POLICY ALTERNATIVES Group says state's
stance on drugs is ineffective, leads to crime by Alison Warden Managing
Editor

"(Governments) have been totally unable with their war on drugs to fight
addiction or solve the problems at the borders." -- Billy McDowell, Alcohol
and drug treatment strategist.

A Stillwater group that calls the U.S. government's war on drugs "the worst
public policy failure of the last 30 years" will meet Wednesday to discuss
current drug policies and their effects on crime.

The Drug Forum of Oklahoma will feature speaker Billy McDowell, a
nationally recognized alcohol and drug teatment strategist. The meeting
will be at 7 p.m. at the OSU Wellness Center.

"My hope is that people who come will begin to look at defining and
understanding how it is we really are hurting the people that are using,"
McDowell said.

McDowell, past director of substance abuse treatment programs in Alaska,
Maine, Missouri New Mexico and Colorado, will speak on understanding
addiction tendency and its relationship to alcohol drug policies.

"I've been involved with every program that has come down the pipe,"
McDowell said. "But we all need to be playing by the same rules.

"You can tell a drug addict all day long he's going to jail, and that's not
going to stop him from using."

Ron duBois, an organizer for the Drug Policy Forum of Oklahoma, said the
government-sponsored "war on drugs" is not only ineffective, but actually
conducive to the continued establishment of organized crime.

"The war on drugs everyone thinks is so great is just a very similar thing
to prohibition," duBois said. "But the 18th Amendment opened a floodgate of
crime, and put the control into the hand of gangsters.

"Because we've labeled certain drugs as illegal does not mean people will
stop using," he said. "It's just like alcohol was--when it was illegal,
people were going to get it one way or another."

McDowell agreed that approaches to solve the drug problem should be
examined at a local, state and national level.

"(Governments) have been totally unable with their war on drugs to fight
addiction or solve the problems at the borders," he said. "We've got more
(drugs) now than we've ever had in the past; I don't care how many they
collect, there's always going to be more.

"There are so many well-intentioned programs, and thank goodness we're
trying some, but often we take the easy fix which isn't a fix," he said.

McDowell questioned a recent decision to take away students' federally
funded loans and grants if they were convicted on drug charges.

"I think it's so important to not drop the person that's using through the
cracks," he said. "I'm not for lawlessness, but let's define the law and
get something straight here: Does the punishment really fit the crime?"

DuBois said the Drug Forum of Oklahoma is primarily interested in "harm
reduction."

"By regulating alcohol, we have reduced the harm it can do," duBois said.
"What I think would improve the (drug) situation would be to get control
out of the hands of gangsters and drug lords and sell drugs the same way we
sell alcohol and nicotine -- to make them legal with government controls."

DuBois said people with a drug problem could be better helped by treatment
programs instead of prison.

"It should be treated as a medical problem rather than a criminal offense,"
he said. "But it's tough to make popele realize they can't control the
desire for a mood-altering substance by passing a law."

McDowell said no simple answer exists to solving the problem, but he hopes
to provoke in-depth discussions at the forum's meeting, some of which he
hopes will inspire change.

"I'm on neither side of the wet-dry issue," he said. "I don't have a halo,
and I don't have a letter sent to me from high above that says, 'Billy, you
tell everybody to use and not to use or whatever.'"

Checked-by: Richard Lake