DEADLY FLAWS

Re: Cox News Service, Mary Alice Davis, Dec. '97, "Global marketing of
heroin is claiming our teen-agers," in 1997 a total of 16 youths from Plano
lost their lives to heroin overdose. Experts report the children were
under the misguided notion that snorting or smoking heroin was inherently
safer than IV injection.

One must ask: How is it that the most aggressive anti-drug policy in the
history of the world failed to communicate the lethal potential of all
opiates -- regardless of the method of ingestion?

Answer: This policy has many deadly flaws. And the most deadly flaw lies
with policy-makers who refuse to share the theater with qualified
personnel. Rational alternatives to our mortally wounded war on drugs
continue to be shunned.

Who seeks alternatives? Associations of trained professionals and private
citizens who have taken the time to discover the success of alternatives
such as needle exchange programs and decriminalizing marijuana for adults.

Ask policy-makers to pursue alternatives under a model of harm reduction
and tolerance.

We can treat addiction, we can even live with it, but who is profiting from
this barrage of open caskets, private prisons and hollow promises?

John F. Wilson
Waco