Curing the illness of drugs

By Globe Staff, 07/21/97

A group of doctors wants to give America's drug policy a
badly needed facelift.

Despite tough drug rhetoric and even tougher jail
sentences, when it comes to winning the war on drugs, it
seems as if the government would prefer not to. It plunges
the bulk of its drug fighting money into the punishment of
users and suppliers, even though what's lacking is
prevention. With the federal government spending some $15
billion to curb drug abuse, this punitive overkill is a
pricey mistake.

Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy, the new
group, hopes to steer the government away from arbitrary
threestrikesandyou'reout approaches. Treat addiction
as a chronic illness, the doctors say, and apply public
health solutions.

In other words, don't let reelectme pitches dress
themselves up as national drug policy.

Supporting Physician Leadership is a March 1997 report
from the General Accounting Office. If Americans want a
war, the report notes, they ought to battle the domestic
demand for drugs. Prevention, the GAO found, works with
schoolage youth, and treatment helps cocaine users.

The other need, the GAO warns, is funding for research to
determine which prevention and treatment methods work and
why. Otherwise drug programs float in the same information
vacuum as falling crime rates, with lots of people taking
credit for a phenomenom that no one has actually
explained.

But more than this, the doctors, the GAO and a host of
others are ultimately unveiling a disturbing trend: too
often the knowledge to solve problems is out there, but
the country refuses to use it. Conviction and funds are
scarce and fiercely overshadowed by a sense that the truly
deserving help themselves, and everybody else should make
do with grudging, partial solutions.

This makes adding more voices to the public debate
essential, and as Physician Leadership has shown,
professionals on the front lines of America's problems
shouldn't wait for an invitation. The country needs them
to speak up.

This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on
07/21/97.