LEGALIZE DRUGS

Terry Michael did a good job listing the societal harms caused by the
drug war in "Legalize drugs," but he forgot to mention that the drug
war simply doesn't work. Creating a punitive nanny state has not
resulted in lower rates of drug use. The University of Michigan's
Monitoring the Future Study reports that lifetime use of marijuana is
higher in the United States than in any European country, yet America
is one of the few Western countries that punishes people who prefer
marijuana to martinis.

There is a middle ground between drug prohibition and blanket
legalization. Switzerland's heroin-maintenance trials have been shown
to reduce disease, death and crime among chronic users.
Heroin-maintenance pilot projects are under way in Canada, Germany,
Spain and the Netherlands. If expanded, prescription heroin
maintenance would deprive organized crime of a core client base. This
would render illegal heroin trafficking unprofitable and spare future
generations addiction.

Marijuana should be taxed and regulated like alcohol, only without the
ubiquitous advertising. As long as marijuana distribution remains in
the hands of organized crime, consumers of the most popular illicit
drug will continue to come into contact with sellers of hard drugs
such as cocaine. This "gateway" is the direct result of a
fundamentally flawed policy. Marijuana arguably is safer than legal
alcohol; it makes no sense to waste tax dollars on failed policies
that finance organized crime and facilitate the use of hard drugs.

ROBERT SHARPE

Policy analyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington