LEGALIZE AND CONTROL DRUGS

Dear Editor:

Wallace G. Craig presents as one of the old guard, disgusted with or
intolerant of addicts (Insite Should be Closed Now, North Shore News,
June 13). His line of claptrap is straight out of the 19th century;
minds closed tight and bereft of all thoughts of progress or innovation.

New ideas and new programs are what is needed to confront the problems
with society, not reactionary, mindless censoring and sweeping the
problem under the rug of the judicial system.

Insite might be a crude first attempt to confront the drug problem,
but it's a giant step forward from the current model where addicts are
criminalized and encouraged to steal and maim to stay high. What part
of the current response to addiction is working? Is tossing the
addicts out on the street a better solution?

Most of the problems with needles on the street and sick addicts is
because they have to obtain their drug by criminal means, hide out to
take it lest they be arrested, ingest poor-quality, adulterated drugs
bought from profiteers and respond to the drug usually where they took
it, all the while suffering from the effects of the low-quality drug
or dirty needles (and the fact that they can't or won't eat).

Why is it that so many people have such a great disdain for the drug
addicts among us? When will normally intelligent people realize that
drug addiction, or any other addiction like food, sex, alcohol or
cigarettes, is a health problem? Why do we legitimize certain health
problems and not others? A person who has a heart attack is treated
with dispatch to save his life, even if he smokes or is obese; a drug
addict is treated as a criminal and many who think like Craig demand
incarceration.

All drugs should be controlled and legalized. Give the addict his
drug. The average citizen shouldn't care if the addicts are
comfortably medicated but should be very happy that they don't have to
break into cars or stab cabbies for a fix. Craig has to admit that
there is a certain percentage of us who have addictions and jail will
do nothing to shrink those numbers. Should we jail alcoholics too?

If you give away the drugs, you also remove the profit motive from
them - a nice side benefit is that gangs that currently distribute and
add poisons to the drugs would then have nothing to do. Some might
even become gainfully employed at Tim Hortons.

There are virtually no drug treatment centres. Addicts who wish to
quit have nowhere to go. The hospitals are full and addicts should not
be there. There is virtually no education about hard drugs.

Society spends the bare minimum on all aspects of addiction except the
incarceration part and that, obviously, is ineffectual.

A lot of police and lawyers would be out of work if they didn't have
to confront buyers, sellers, importers of drugs or the results of the
addict's search for a fix.

Ken Dibnah,

West Vancouver