A MIDDLE GROUND ON DRUGS

Regarding Mike Lozon's May 19 column, there is a middle ground between
drug prohibition and blanket legalization. Switzerland's heroin
maintenance program has been shown to reduce disease, death and crime
among chronic users. Providing addicts with standardized doses in a
clinical setting eliminates many of the problems associated with
heroin use. The success of the Swiss program has inspired pilot heroin
maintenance projects in Canada, Germany, Spain, Denmark and the
Netherlands. 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.

Marijuana should be taxed and regulated like alcohol, only without the
ubiquitous advertising. Separating the hard and soft drug markets is
critical. As long as marijuana distribution is controlled by organized
crime, consumers of the most popular illicit drug will continue to
come into contact with sellers of addictive drugs like meth. Given
that marijuana is arguably safer than legal alcohol -- the plant has
never been shown to cause an overdose death -- it makes no sense to
waste tax dollars on failed policies that finance organized crime and
facilitate hard drug use. Drug policy reform may send the wrong
message to children, but I like to think the children are more
important than the message.

Robert Sharpe Policy Analyst Common Sense for Drug Policy Washington,
D.C.