EDUCATION, REGULATION BETTER THAN BANS

Dear Editor:

A recent North Shore News column gets it right, sort of (Society Must
Take a Stand on Drug Use, July 19). Drug abuse is harmful to
individuals, families and society. That's patently obvious. But it
doesn't automatically follow from there that prohibition is good.

By any objective standard, the two most dangerous drugs in our
society are tobacco and alcohol. Combined they account for millions
of premature deaths around the world every single year. So if we're
going to start selectively prohibiting recreational drug use, those
two should logically be first. Indeed, we tried alcohol prohibition.
It didn't work. It's not working with other drugs either. On the
other hand, by "tak(ing) a stand on (tobacco) use," society has
dramatically slashed the rate of teenage tobacco addiction over the
past two decades. Very few had to go to jail, at taxpayers' expense,
by the way, to make that happen. Instead, we wisely adopted a public
health model to deal with tobacco. Education, prevention and
treatment, combined with regulated sales by licensed businesses and
clerks who check ID. All the criminal drug dealer cares to see from
our kids is the cash. Most effectively of all though, we "took a
stand" by making tobacco use socially unacceptable. Teen peer
pressure cuts both ways.

As Gil Yard's column correctly implies, much of the attraction of
illicit drugs is their "outlaw" status, a story as old as Adam and
Eve and as timely as today's front page.

Educate, regulate, tax, and control. There is a better way.

Greg Francisco

Paw Paw, MI