NEIGHBOURS VICTIMS OF DRUG POLICY

Re: "Needle exchange an unmitigated disaster," Oct. 19.

I read the article with interest and sympathy. What is happening in
the Cormorant Street neighbourhood is a consequence of a failed
experiment in social engineering called drug prohibition. This
approach transforms what are essentially health, housing and life
skills problems into criminal-justice problems and marginalizes,
through criminal stigmatization, people who need treatment for
addictions and, usually, mental-health problems too.

We need to distinguish between those problems that arise as a
consequence of drug use from those that arise from
prohibition.

Drug abuse is essentially an individual health problem, most
effectively treated as a matter of public health, including mental
health. But prohibition transforms issues of individual behaviour,
mental health and social functioning into criminal justice problems
and worsens the health issues that underlie the troubles of drug abuse
and mental illness in the first place.

Drug prohibition and incarceration cost more than public health
measures without reducing either the supply of illicit drugs, the
demand for illicit drugs or the harm from using illicit drugs.
Prohibition enriches organized crime and fills prisons. Everyone else
loses.

The new National Anti-Drug Strategy will further aggravate this
situation, for that is the long-term experience of "getting tough" in
other countries.

Craig Jones

Executive director

John Howard Society of Canada

Kingston, Ont.