TRY DRUG EXPERIMENT

C. LANGFORD (Letters, 6/8) is jealous that people addicted to heroin may
receive free heroin while he or she has to pay for cigarettes.

C. Langford is privileged to have become addicted to a legal ding. He or
she is able to buy this drug without fear of being arrested or treated like
an outcast.

The quality and price of this addictive drug are known and controlled. The
health warnings are on the pack. Help with addiction is immediately
available when needed, without prejudice or punishment.

All this for a drug which is intrinsically the most addictive and harmful
of drugs.

Illegal drugs like heroin, which are flooding our streets, do not have such
controls. Its users are treated as criminals and punished, often severely.
When addicts want treatment, they are put on long waiting lists and often
treated with contempt.

People like C. Langford should take the matter of illegal drugs in our
society more seriously. How would it be if C. Langford could not get hold
of nicotine when he or she needed it?

These flippant responses are ignorant and do not address the seriousness of
a problem that causes death and tragedy, crime and corruption of immense
proportions throughout our society.

Solutions such as a trial of prescription heroin to those addicted, which
incidentally would not be free, could reduce some of these horrific
problems. It is certainly worth a trial.

M. McCONNELL,

Higgins, ACT.


Checked-by: Mike Gogulski