USE REASON, NOT EMOTION

Re: Call off the global drug war June 20, commentary

The drug war started slowly about 100 years ago. A handful of
prominent Americans wanted to restrict opium production so no colonial
power could benefit from the opium trade, as England, France and Spain
had done. Their motives were the best, but they didn't understand that
restricting supply would enable a wealthy and violent illegal market.
Even the failure of Prohibition didn't connect the dots for them.
Emotion trumped reason. It was a=C2=80=C2=94 and is a=C2=80=C2=94 the fat
al flaw of U.S.
antidrug policy, with the destructive consequences described by Jimmy
Carter in this column.

But it is beginning to change, thanks to the conservative Swiss. In
the early 1990s, Zurich and Bern were confronted with an epidemic of
AIDS, overdose deaths and property crime fueled by IV drug use. Their
response was a radical experiment to provide clean heroin to adult
addicts willing to register with the state.

Initial results were good, so the experiment was extended and expanded
by a 1999 referendum. In 2008 the Swiss voted, 68-32 percent, to make
it permanent. By then, methadone availability had been increased, so
heroin was needed only for the 7 percent of addicts for whom methadone
was inadequate. The average age of newly registered addicts is slowly
climbing, an indication that younger people are not becoming addicted.
The use of other drugs is either holding steady or declining.

The results are so good that even the U.N. Office of Drug Control has
quit criticizing the Swiss, and other European countries are trying
it. We North Americans call it "harm reduction," but we offer little
methadone and no heroin. Still, reason is beginning to trump emotion.

John Chase, Palm Harbor