CHANGE DRUG POLICY FROM ENFORCEMENT TO CONTROL

A recent viewpoint's simplistic and totalitarian lock 'em up drug war
strategy has but one reply: seig heil - both to the thought so expressed and
to the policy that our drug czar evilly promotes

Of 1.3 million drug arrests each year, 700,000 are for so-called cannabis
crimes, 85 percent for possession; arrests in Hawaii County have numbered as
high as 666 per year in recent years.

There is a better option.

Drug regulation is a policy which would give us much better control over
drug abuse than does either prohibition or unregulated legalization.

We should do away with the schedule one classification for all drugs.

Allow physicians to both prescribe, recommend and even allow with
reservation currently prohibited drugs. This may be done in a way that
tracks drug use and reacts to treat individual drug abuse as it occurs.

Tax all recreational drug use and include existing alcohol and tobacco taxes
and reserve all the moneys from these taxes for drug abuse treatment
programs and anti-drug abuse educational programs.

This offers a vast gain over the expensive draconian criminalization scheme
proposed by that recent viewpoint in this paper.

Prescriptive and recommended drug use should be monitored as part and parcel
of the licensed and regulated sales of all drugs.

As a part of diminishing drug abuse all mass media advertising for any
recreational drug should be prohibited speech.

Ones partaking of physically addictive drugs, opiates, ice, cocaine etc.,
would result in immediate eligibility for voluntary withdrawal treatment
programs combined with life skills training - all funded by the taxes on
drug use itself.

The black market dealers and the violence they promote would dry up as
obscene profits disappeared because addictive drugs and recreational drugs
would be cheaply available to users in pharmacies.

Alcohol, tobacco and cannabis would be sold over the counter in licensed
establishments who would card users, something current dealers do not.

Driver license restriction and controlled environment (no public use) for
these drugs could be enforced more efficiently than it is now.

Burglary and other property crimes would diminish dramatically as junkies
would not be compelled to steal to pay 1,000 per cent profits to dealers to
avoid the horribly painful withdrawal from opiates.

Teen drug abuse and addiction would go down as regulated drugs would be less
available; this currently demonstrated by the sad fact it is easier for
teens to get cannabis and ecstasy than beer or tobacco.

As now there would still be drug abuse, just less of it.

Society would not be adding drugs to the index of human misery as these
drugs are already presently in use, but regulating them; and using the taxes
from their sales to diminish their use is something prohibition will never
do.

Regulation fixes problems the current policy neglects, given current drug
policy it's unknown who distributes the drugs, nor are dealers subjected to
licensing and quality control; who buys which drugs, and how much, who
abuses them; no taxes are paid on them; drugs are directly marketed to kids;
when someone is found abusing drugs taxpayers are forced to house them in
overcrowded "correctional facilities" at rates more costly than a college
tuition.

Taxpayers currently fund a $50 billion a year war on some drugs, the states,
federal, and local cost combined, the status quo is in fact a full
employment act for the bureaucratic aristocracy.

Drug warriors' greatest reason for keeping prohibition is not public safety,
rather to keep their jobs. After all, where does the $50 billion in tax go
but to pay those in public employ to clog our courts and waste public
treasure in a task best served by those who society recognizes as trained
and licensed to deal with drugs - physicians.

The bureaucratic aristocracy has a vested interest in perpetuating the
status quo.

However, there is a way out for drug addictions as reported in this month's
Journal of the American Medical Association's article on ibogaine, a drug
which is an addiction interrupter.

Addicts given this drug, after sleeping at the end of a 36-hour treatment,
wake up former addicts who experience no withdrawal symptoms nor do they
crave their drug of choice.

If we used ibogaine treatment camps where drug abusers could enroll in a
residency program teaching life skills, we could make rapid gain in
rehabilitating lives now lost in America's drug gulag.

Further information of the clinical use and success of withdrawal can be
found with a Internet search on ibogaine or at these web locations:
http://www.ibogaine.org/allan.html

http://www.ibogaine.org/treatment.html

http://www.ibogaine.org/manual.html

Insanity is repeating over and over an act with failed results; prohibition
has a 70-year history of failure.

We need to treat drug abusers as the sons and daughters of America and free
them from their illnesses mercifully, humanely, rather than waging war on
them.

Viewpoint articles represent the views of individuals in our community and
do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the newspaper.