IS DECRIMINALIZATION A SOLUTION TO DRUG WOE?

Hay River and similar towns are, in many ways, the bottom of the drug food
chain.

Few, if any, drugs are produced here: cocaine, crack and marijuana are
imported for consumption.

The impact of narcotics and narcotics legislation is felt from the local
hospital and schools, to the drug farms of Bolivia.

At a conference in Mexico, Feb. 12 through 15, legislators, scholars and
drug business people from North and South America and Europe, met to
discuss the decriminalization of drugs.

Citing the violence that the war on drugs has caused throughout drug
growing and drug consuming countries, the opening address argued strongly
for decriminalization.

"It is illogical to think we can supress drug use or consumption," said
Columbia's former attorney general, Gustavo de Greiff. Columbia has seen
years of a drug war that has left thousands dead, and the economy in shreds.

"We need a politics of regulation of drug production and consumption, one
that includes education on the dangers of drugs and treatment for the fallen."

De Greiff blamed the hemisphere-wide drug prohibition on the United States.
Other countries must adopt the policy "because of economic and political
pressures," he said.

This was the first conference of its kind.