NEW APPROACH NEEDED

Bill Bird (Your Views, April 5) wrote that if there are "better and cheaper
ways to deal with the drug problem ... if they really exist, bring them
forward." I suggest he consider treatment and recovery. Recovery from
alcohol and drug addiction is doing something about the cause of the
problem. Imprisonment is putting a Band-Aid on a symptom of the problem.
Bird also states that "while lacking any empirical evidence, I have to
believe that most of those felons would advise their brothers and friends
that the risk of 20 years in the slammer for a few drug deals isn't worth
the risk." That concept may make sense to Bird, but it doesn't make sense
to those of us addicted to alcohol and drugs. Many of our brothers and
friends did tell us many things, but we keep on doing the same thing and
getting into the same trouble. That is the disease part of addictions.

Empirical evidence has proven that people can and do recover from alcohol
and drug addiction. Unfortunately, the guiding principle for Oklahoma has
been directed at symptoms of the problem. That will continue until
taxpayers realize that the economical/humane solution is to do something
about the cause.

Jim Russell

Norman