ASSESS DRUG RISKS

Brenda Katz's guest column of March 10 illustrates the basic problem with
the debate on drug legalization. She argues that drugs are bad, therefore
"legalization" is not indicated. But she does not define "legalization,"
preferring instead to leave it to the imagination.

A more honest debate would presume that some drugs, whether legal or
illegal, carry great risk for some people in some circumstances. Then
debate the most effective way to manage that risk. Recent experience with
tobacco and alcohol has demonstrated that an unfettered free market is
worse than today's rules for education, labeling and against advertising.

Conversely, history shows that prohibition of these two drugs is worse than
an unfettered free market. Even summary amputations and executions failed
to stamp out tobacco in the Old World in the centuries following its
discovery in the New World.

More recently, our "noble experiment" to stamp out alcohol in the 1920s
ended when it became apparent that prohibition enforcement caused more
societal damage than it prevented.

This experience suggests that there is an optimum level of regulation to
achieve minimum societal damage, probably neither an unfettered free market
nor prohibition. Each debater should argue for his/her chosen level on its
own merits, not against the demerits of the level he/she believes his/her
opponent holds, regardless how fervently he/she believes it.

John Chase, Palm Harbor