DRUG STRATEGIES A PIPE DREAM

Crack cocaine addicts typically lie, cheat, steal and commit other
crimes of violence in pursuit of the money required to sustain their
addiction.

They also typically turn into psychotics, suffering from severe
depression and the phenomenon, well known to police, dubbed "excited
delirium."

To say that crack addicts are a financial burden and a menace to the
community is to state the obvious.

A great thrust of public policy, we think, should be a vigorous
prevention campaign exposing crack cocaine for the evil it is.

And it should be accompanied by treatment programs that help addicts
kick their habit. In the real world, sadly, things are apparently not
so simple.

Here's what University of Victoria sociology and medical sciences
professor Dr. Benedikt Fischer has to say about crack addicts: "We're
really doing nothing for them, neither in the prevention realm, nor do
we have any effective form of treatment."

Fischer led a recent study showing crack smokers who share pipes may
risk catching hepatitis C, a disease that costs Canada some $1 billion
a year. But the study is by no means conclusive.

Fischer describes it as "a potentially important piece of evidence,"
while calling for "systematic additional research."

In fact, it involved tests on 22 crack pipes shared by 51 users in
Toronto, of which one pipe -- just one -- tested positive for the hep
C virus antibody. Acting on the basis of such preliminary evidence,
the Vancouver Island Health Authority is to launch a program in the
new year to distribute free crack pipes, or the components thereof, to
addicts in Victoria, Nanaimo, Campbell River, Courtenay and elsewhere.

From a purely medical standpoint, the prevention of a single case of
hep C is a good thing.

But it is surely bad when anti-drug strategies are focused on such a
narrow perspective.

To us, the practice of distributing, at taxpayers' expense, the means
of ingesting a dangerously debilitating and crime-fuelling drug is
absurd. It sends the message: "Do what you like. Don't worry, we'll
see that you don't kill yourself."

And isn't that just the message the drug pushers want to
hear?

The arrests this week in B.C. of dozens of suspected drug traffickers
show clearly the strength of the enemy we face.

Free crack pipes?

Who's kidding whom?

We're clutching at straws if we think this is any answer to our drug
woes.