DRUG DIRECTOR CRITIC'S LETTER MISREPRESENTS THE TRUTH

Steve Hach's Dec. 8 letter misconstrues completely Florida's recent
decreases in drug abuse and related consequences. Although he seems to
bemoan it, the fact is that the death rates for lethal amounts of specific
drugs are down over the past six months in Florida -- cocaine by 8 percent,
heroin by 10 percent, hydrocodone by 10 percent, oxycodone by 20 percent,
and methylated amphetamines by 50 percent.

Only methadone death rates went up, a legal drug increasingly misused for
an illicit -- and deadly -- high.

Hach's bizarre letter loses that point as he moves on to attack the data on
lowered youth drug-abuse rates (he seems not to like positive news).
Instead, he forgets that the youthful users today become the addicts that
die from illicit drug use later on, after a lifetime of ill health, lost
opportunities and misery. Therefore he readily dismisses the Florida
Substance Abuse Survey as meaningless, even though, with a sample of 63,000
sixth-through 12th-graders, it is the most highly regarded survey
instrument of its type in the nation.

Southwest Florida has not had similar success; that's all the more reason
that we need to work together to address this regional problem. Indeed,
both youth use rates and deaths caused by lethal amounts of specific drugs
are up in the region, an interesting juxtaposition that indicates it is
correct to work on both problems at the same time. Southwest Florida is now
poised to do this with some excellent local leadership available from Lee
County Coalition for a Drug-Free Southwest Florida in Fort Myers (contact:
Keral Kronseder-Vogt), Southwest Florida Addiction Services in Fort Myers
(contact: Kevin Lewis), Coastal Behavioral Health Care in Sarasota
(contact: Dr. Christine Caulfield), and First Step in Sarasota (contact:
David Beasley).

At the end of his letter, Hach rants on about the "body count" in Vietnam,
which is so meaningless as to warrant no comment -- except that I served in
Vietnam, was wounded in action there, and know full well the implications
of body counts. I, therefore, found his analogy repulsive. If the point of
his letter was to solve Florida's drug problem, he failed; if it was to lay
out facts, he got lost; but if it was to misrepresent the truth, he succeeded.