JAILING ADDICTS WON'T FIX E. KY. DRUG PROBLEM

The Kentucky All-Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting system records
and analyzes prescription patterns for any hint of irregularity -- patient
abuse specifically.

In an effort to proactively fight the drug problem in Eastern Kentucky,
some lawmakers are proposing a bond issue of $1.5 million to better staff,
equip and maintain the system, known as KASPER.

I do not doubt the ability of KASPER to track and produce highly
sophisticated statistical analyses -- letting law enforcement know who is
being prescribed what drugs.

No, my worry is that this strategy might only block the criminal justice
system's effort to diminish painkiller abuse, adding trees to the forest,
so to speak.

When we really think about the drug problem in Kentucky, as tax-paying
citizens and as policymakers, we know drug abuse is not going to be
eliminated through incarcerating individual users. We see the revolving
nature -- at no small financial cost to taxpayers-- of locking up addicts
and casual users.

I thought enforcement efforts were usually geared to locating and
apprehending those on the supply side: dealers, pushers, gangsters and, in
the case of painkillers, doctors.

The criminal justice system, as Gov. Paul Patton's forced early release of
nearly 600 inmates attests, is bursting at the seams, overflowing with drug
users and addicts who committed other offenses (prostitution and property
crimes) to fuel such habits .

Maybe the money used to jail addicts could be used for more potentially
productive alternatives. Such alternatives might prove not only socially
beneficial, but financially as well. It might be cheaper than the estimated
$22,000 a year we pay to incarcerate each offender.

Krista Kay Clark

Nicholasville