DRUG SOLUTION SURE HAVOC IN THE SHORT TERM

CINTRA: Thank you for your courageous, clear-headed, common-sense
commentary on addiction and the war on drugs. Since your Oct. 2 column
included the phrase, "but if you can put it a little more succinctly, I'll
sign any petition you circulate my way," I thought you might be interested
in the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which publishes a weekly
newsletter on the Web (www.drcnet.org / ). For just one striking example of
how brutally nutty things have gotten, consider item No. 9 in the Oct. 2
newsletter, "Imprisonment for Legal Cooking Herbs in Oklahoma." Regards -
J.J. Staples

Yo Cintra: The solution to our drug problems is very simple. Repeal drug
prohibition and use the money we save to take care of the casualties
actually caused by drug use. We could also rebuild the inner cities and
eliminate most of the causes of drug abuse with the money being wasted on
drug laws.

Proof that repeal is the answer comes from the fact that no one was
robbing, whoring and killing over drugs when addicts could buy all of the
heroin, morphine, cocaine, opium and any other drug they wanted cheaply and
legally at the corner drug store. Drug crime is entirely a product of
lunatic drug laws.

The same thing happened during alcohol prohibition, when the best efforts
of the "dry's" couldn't stem the tide of bootleg booze that flooded the
country. Alcohol use dropped for the first year or so because it took the
bootleggers that long to build their stills and organize distribution. From
then on, alcohol use rose until it exceeded pre-prohibition figures.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. reported that it was paying five times
as many alcohol-related death claims in 1925 as in 1920! Alcohol
prohibition established organized crime in the United States and set off
the biggest crime wave in history up to that time. Now we repeat the same
error with a drug policy that hands billions over to the most vicious
criminals on the planet. That's brain-dead thinking. It's worth remembering
that Eliot Ness and his untouchables never put the bootleggers out of
business - repeal did! Prohibition is the worst possible method of drug
control. In fact, if you listen to the narcomaniacs, they inadvertently let
us know that their policy offers no control of illicit drugs at all.
Because of their lack-witted prohibition policy, we now see 13-year-old
heroin users. That never happened before drug prohibition.

How much more needless devastation will we tolerate before we demand that
these idiotic drug laws be stricken from the books? - Redford Givens, San
Francisco

Dearest R. Givens: I agree with you about almost everything, but no
self-respecting drug pusher wants to give heroin to 13-year-olds, because
kids make terrible junkies. They don't have any money, and they're totally
unreliable as clockers if they're trying to cover their own habit. Plus,
they have truant officers and parents and counselors nearby who notice
behavioral changes and confront the kid, who then either runs away (and the
cops are brought in) or starts crying and talking (and the cops are brought
in).

However, while I agree with you about the absurd nature of drug laws, there
is no way that they could be repealed at this primitive stage of awareness
on the nature of addiction. When liquor stopped being illegal, it became a
recreational pleasure for some, and it began a wholesale, unbridled
destruction of those with a biochemical predisposition toward alcoholism,
like large amounts of the Irish and American Indian populations. If drugs
were legal, we'd still have just as many drug addicts - they just wouldn't
be as easy to put in jail. A large number of them would wreck themselves to
the level of sleeping in doorways and eating through the trash and
occasionally resort to crime to satisfy their howling need to fix.

Unless there were quantum leaps in advancement made in the treatment of
drug addiction, and the generally walloping recidivism rate of lapsing
addicts were somehow improved, and unless in-patient rehabilitation
facilities became gloriously abundant and free to the desperately indigent,
legalizing drugs might make matters worse for a long while, because
street-level addicts might never end up with a roof over their heads or
enforced periods of sobriety if they were no longer imprisoned.

This country has a habit of jailing the poor as political prisoners in lieu
of providing civilized options that provide help or care. This is a
short-sighted and, eventually, a way more expensive way of hiding the dead
dog under the rug, but no politician wants to be responsible for vast,
short-term expenditures to facilitate long-term gain. Only a revolution
would bring real change in our static system, and that would be beneficial
only to our grandchildren's grandchildren. Americans don't have that kind
of attention span.

Communist? Please write to: CINTRA WILSON FEELS YOUR PAIN, San Francisco
Examiner, P.O. Box 7260, San Francisco, CA 94120, or e-mail the Psychic
Supergenius at xintra@earthlink.net.

Copyright: (c) 1998 San Francisco Examiner

Checked-by: Pat Dolan