THE 'JUST SAY NO' APPROACH IS NO GOOD

There is a lot about heroin that even people "in the know" may not
know.

Because heroin is sold via an unregulated illicit market, its quality
and purity fluctuate tremendously. A user accustomed to low-quality
heroin who unknowingly uses pure heroin will likely overdose. The
inevitable tough-on-drugs reaction to overdose deaths is a very real
threat to public safety.

Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains
constant only increase the profitability of drug trafficking.

For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads
desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate
habits. The drug war doesn't fight crime, it fuels crime.

While the U.S. remains committed to moralistic drug policies modeled
after America's disastrous experiment with alcohol prohibition, Europe
has largely abandoned the drug war in favor of harm reduction
alternatives. Examples of harm reduction include needle exchange
programs to stop the spread of HIV, marijuana regulation aimed at
separating the hard and soft drug markets, and treatment alternatives
that do not require incarceration as a prerequisite.

On the cutting edge of harm reduction, Switzerland's heroin
maintenance program has been shown to reduce drug-related disease,
death and crime among chronic users. Providing addicts with
standardized doses in a clinical setting eliminates many of the
problems associated with illicit heroin use. Addicts would not be
sharing needles if not for zero-tolerance laws that restrict access to
clean syringes, nor would they be committing crimes if not for
artificially inflated black-market prices.

Unfortunately, tough-on-drugs politicians have built careers on
confusing drug prohibition's collateral damage with drugs themselves.
When politics trumps science, people die. Centers for Disease Control
researchers estimate that 57 percent of AIDS cases among women and 36
percent of overall AIDS cases in the U.S. are linked to injection-drug
use or sex with partners who inject drugs. This easily preventable
public health crisis is a direct result of zero-tolerance laws that
restrict access to clean syringes.

The practice of prescribing heroin to addicts was standard in England
from the 1920s to the 1960s. In response to U.S. pressure,
prescription heroin maintenance was discontinued in 1971. There are
only a handful of English general practitioners that still prescribe
heroin.

New licensing requirements and overzealous drug enforcement have
effectively discouraged what was once a common practice. The loss of a
controlled heroin distribution system and subsequent creation of an
unregulated illicit market led the number of heroin addicts in England
to skyrocket from fewer than 2,000 in 1970 to roughly 200,000 chronic
users today.

Heroin maintenance pilot projects are under way in Canada, Germany,
Spain and the Netherlands. The drug is distributed to addicts in a
clinical setting. You can think of it as a needle exchange program,
and then some.

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. Putting public health before politics
may send the wrong message to children, but I like to think the
children are more important than the message.