"WINNING" THE DRUG WAR

It seems that two junkie havens on Pittsburgh's North Side were
recently seized by the U.S. Attorney's Office and will soon be boarded
up and padlocked, making the neighborhood a little safer .

As heartening as that is, my comments are as follows:

So they shut two buildings. And then what -- the junkies disappear?
They stop using? No -- they move into somebody else's neighborhood and
it's business as usual.

Considering all the money we spend in this country fighting this
so-called "war on drugs" -- at some point we have to admit we've lost.

Incarcerating small-time dealers and small-time users and chasing them
from building to building and neighborhood to neighborhood obviously
isn't working.

I wish the media would get behind this -- in a big way -- and force
our government to start addressing why so many of our citizens --
especially our young ones -- turn to drugs.

I know several addicts who have been arrested more than once, done
jail time, been forced into rehab more than once or twice, have taken
drug tests, taken prescribed methadone (legal, synthetic heroin) --
and who still live to get high.

I swear, if all illegal drugs became legal today, I do not think there
would be one more person in this country using drugs than there was
yesterday. All we've done -- with no success in the war on drugs -- is
create a subculture of criminals.

Think about the people who were using those crack houses: Where are
their families? Where are their parents, brothers and sisters? Where
is the guidance? What ever happened to the concept of people being
responsible to each other in their families? If we can bring that
value system back, we can win the war on drugs.

JANIS MCDONALD

Herminie