NEEDLE EXCHANGE PROGRAMS SHOULD WORK IN N.J.

Sen. Leonard T. Connors, R-9th, says this about drug abuse, and the
needle exchange program:

"The continued support of law enforcement and their efforts to
apprehend those who break laws established to curtail drug usage in
our communities must still be recognized as the best approach."

The drug war in this country started in 1914 with the passing of the
Harrison Narcotic Act. That makes this war 90 years old, and law
enforcement hasn't curtailed drug use anymore than Prohibition stopped
people from drinking.

Law enforcement arrests people and gives them criminal records, which
means that, even if addicts get clean, the likelihood of them getting
good jobs and becoming productive members of society is still about
nil.

Our politicians never do anything about the reasons people take drugs.
The government dumped more than 50,000 heroin addicts on society after
the Vietnam War.

I wonder how many there will be from this war, since they are fighting
in the biggest opium countries in the world.

How about the 1.7 million more people living in poverty now than two
years ago, and 3 million more since President Bush has been in office?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are now more than 40
million people without health insurance and our senior citizens have
to go to Canada to get drugs, while our politicians try to pass laws
to keep them from doing that.

Illegal aliens are flooding the country, getting free education for
their kids and health care for themselves while working Americans have
to pay for it.

Apparently it depends on whose studies anti-needle exchange people
look at when they say the programs don't work, because the School of
Public Health, University of California in Berkeley, and the Institute
for Health Policy Studies, University of California, San Francisco,
did studies for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
and they say they do work.

Before politicians attack the needle exchange, or any other drug
program, perhaps they should spend some time pushing a national health
plan, or at least stop giving free health care to all the illegal
aliens in this country.

We don't need to vote anymore; what we need to do is send the
politicians to Afghanistan, so they can see where the drugs the
addicts are using are coming from.

EDWARD H. DECKER

Whiting