CURBING DRUG ABUSE TAKES MORE THAN GUNS

Getting Away From It All Has A Dark New Meaning

Worldwide, drug abuse has mushroomed into a $600 billion industry. It now
rivals tourism as a money-maker, taking 200 million people into strange
lands from which many never return.

Globally, marijuana and hashish are the escapes of choice for two in three
drug abusers, the United Nations heard at a session on drug control this
past week. They're dangerous and debilitating, though rarely fatal. But a
fearsome number of people poison themselves with heroin, cocaine,
hallucinogens and amphetamines. These kill people, ruin minds, wreck
societies.

We do ourselves no good by over-consuming $300 billion worth of legal
medical drugs as well - not counting booze, but that's another issue.

Combatting the deadliest drugs must be our chief priority, and a balanced
approach is best.

Canadians rightly regard drug abuse as both a health problem and as a
public safety (read: criminal) problem that costs us $1.4 billion a year.
Solicitor-General Andy Scott urged that the U.N. adopt this two-track
approach, in a speech that drew few headlines back home but which was
radical enough given the lopsided approaches that some countries have
adopted.

Some, including the United States, pour billions into a judicial war on
drugs domestically and offshore, without making enough distinction between
hard and soft drugs, and without putting adequate resources into public
education and health programs. The war has been a failure.

Others such as Myanmar, Afghanistan, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Laos, Mexico
and Brazil, feature corrupt political, business and military elites that
grow rich exporting the stuff, in part because their countries are
underdeveloped.

But there's precious little money available to wean their economies off
drug crops.

The U.N.'s drug-fighting czar Pino Arlacchi faces a daunting task raising
$5 billion for a program to eliminate opium poppies and coca production in
10 years.

Considering the magnitude of the problem, the U.N.'s pledges to combat
money-laundering, to curb the chemicals used to make drugs, and to make it
easier to extradite criminals, may have only a marginal impact.

Drug-consuming countries need a more focussed attack, via public education
and health programs, on consumption of the killer drugs. Drug-producing
countries need crop substitution.

The U.N. session did endorse a more comprehensive approach, emphasizing the
need to curb demand while fighting supply. That's a worthwhile bit of
consciousness-raising.

Over time, this approach looks more promising than trying to smash the drug
barons using heavy-handed police and military methods that encourage
slash-and-burn attacks on farm communities, torture, summary execution, the
death penalty and other human rights abuses.

There ought to be no letup in the ``war'' against chemicals that kill. But
the ``smart weapons'' in that combat are education, development and sound
public health practices. Not the courts, much less terror.