SEPARATE THE DRUG MARKETS FOR CONTROL

To the editor:

There is a middle ground between drug prohibition and blanket
legalization. Switzerland's heroin maintenance program has been shown
to reduce disease, death and crime among chronic users. Addicts would
not be sharing needles if not for zero tolerance laws that restrict
access to clean syringes, nor would they be committing crimes if not
for artificially inflated black market prices.

Providing addicts with standardized doses in a clinical setting
eliminates many of the problems associated with heroin use. Heroin
maintenance pilot projects are under way in Canada, Germany, Spain
and the Netherlands. If expanded, prescription heroin maintenance
would deprive organized crime of a core client base. This would
render illegal heroin-trafficking unprofitable and spare future
generations addiction.

Marijuana should be taxed and regulated like alcohol, only without
the ubiquitous advertising. Separating the hard and soft drug markets
is critical. As long as marijuana distribution is controlled by
organized crime, consumers of the most popular illicit drug will
continue to come into contact with sellers of addictive drugs like
cocaine and methamphetamine.

Given that marijuana is arguably safer than legal alcohol -- the
plant has never been shown to cause an overdose death -- it makes no
sense to waste scarce resources on failed policies that finance
organized crime and facilitate hard drug use. Drug policy reform may
send the wrong message to children, but I like to think the children
are more important than the message.

Robert Sharpe, MPA, policy analyst, Common Sense for Drug Policy,
Washington, D.C.