PROHIBITION IS THE PROBLEM, NOT ILLEGAL DRUGS

IT SHOULD be obvious that giving control of a huge drugs market to vicious
criminals is bad policy. Virtually all of the problems we have with drugs
come from the illegal black market that our insane drugs laws subsidise.
Here in the United States 15 years of the harshest drug prohibition
enforcement in history have made us the world leader in incarceration,
while heroin and cocaine are purer, cheaper and more widely available than
ever before. Drugs prohibition is such a failure that we are beginning to
see addicts as young as 12 and 13.

It is interesting to note that history is repeating itself. A terrible
epidemic of child drunkenness rampaged across America in the late 1920s and
early 1930s. Bootleggers then, just like drugs dealers today, did not care
how old their customers were, as long as they had the money to pay for
alcohol. Schools had to be closed because of problems with drunk students.
Under-age drinking did not decline until alcohol prohibition was repealed
and licensed dealers could be forced to obey age limits.

The only way to regain control of illicit drugs is by decriminalising them
and regulating their use. Regulation is impossible under a drugs ban. The
harsher the laws become, the worse our "drugs problem" will be. When we
foolishly outlawed alcohol we experienced exactly the same "problems" we
now have with drugs prohibition.

We should remember that federal agents and the police never put the
bootleggers out of business when alcohol was banned; repeal did.
Redford Givens San Francisco, California, USA
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PAUL FLYNN, Britain's leading anti-prohibition MP and medical cannabis
campaigner is right in arguing that a blanket ban on drugs does not solve
anything; it simply creates additional problems.

I co-founded the DRCNet Online Library of Drug Policy, the website address
of which is. www.druglibrary.org. The centrepiece of the library is the
full text of the largest studies of drugs policy from around the world over
the past 100 years The library also has many thousands of supporting
historical and research documents. In short, all of these studies concluded
that banning drugs is a disaster and that legislation should be repealed.

I have personally contacted every "drugs tsar" appointed by the US
government in recent years, including William Bennett, Bob Martinez, Lee
Brown and General McCaffrey. I asked each of them if they could name any
significant study of drugs policy in the past 100 years which supported
prohibition. They all admitted that they did not know of a single such study.

The evidence is overwhelming. Prohibition of drugs is a disaster.
Clifford A Schaffer Director, DRCNet Online Library of Drug Policy
Canyon County. California USA
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THE reason why methadone treatment does not work in much of the United
Kingdom is because it is not given under supervision. In Scotland and
overseas, where methadone dosing is witnessed, deaths from the drug are
very uncommon. Most addicts on treatment use fewer illicit drugs; they get
jobs and largely return to normal family life and there is less crime.
Dr Andrew Byrne Redfern, New South Wales, Australia
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THE only way to reduce the harm that drugs cause is to destroy the illegal,
irresponsible, armed black market and to replace it with a legal market
which can be rigorously policed, regulated and controlled.

Tim Sheridan London, England

Checked-by: Pat Dolan