ALCOHOL: IT'S WORSE THAN HEROIN

Re: Combating Crime, June 9.

Half of all traffic fatalities are alcohol-related. Alcohol use is
associated with 69% of drownings and has been found to be involved
with 70% percent of all deaths and 63% of injuries from falls.
Alcohol is a significant factor in the battered child syndrome.

"Alcohol use is our costliest and most widespread drug problem,"
reports Richard W. Wilsnack of the University of North Dakota School
of Medicine.

According to the Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs,
the amount of harm done to the human body by nicotine and alcohol
vastly exceeds the physical harm done by all of the other
psychoactive drugs put together. A major error of the current drug
classification system is that it treats alcohol and nicotine -- the
most harmful drugs by far -- essentially as non-drugs.

Vancouver city council's decision to change the bylaws to allow more
pub and liquor outlets in the suburbs in order to guarantee alcohol
users and abusers greater access to their "injection" sites is
hypocritical in the extreme -- especially considering that,
physiologically, alcohol is at least 1,000 times more harmful than
heroin. Why can't the so-called illicit drug users purchase their
drugs of choice and do them in the privacy of their homes if that is
their desire? That would at least get them off the streets?

Legislated morality never worked during the prohibition era in the
Unites States and it is not working with illicit drugs. It would not
help alcohol and tobacco addicts if they were disgraced, fired from
their jobs and declared enemies of the state, as is the case with
illicit users.

Croft Woodruff, Surrey, B.C.