PRESENT POLICY CAUSES DANGEROUS DRUG USE

Drug czar John P. Walters' lame reasoning on marijuana dependency
[Commentary, Nov. 3, "Pot Shots"] does far more harm than the higher
strength pot he blames for drug addiction.

According to Walters, similar "chemical changes in the brain" resulting
from heroin, cocaine and marijuana prove marijuana's equivalent
"dependency-producing" properties.

Chocolate and dozens of FDA-approved pharmaceuticals also produce such
changes. Following Walter's logic, those substances therefore produce
dependency for which treatment should be sought.

Walters also argues that young people erroneously "believe [marijuana] is
not as dangerous as ... other substances are."

Yikes!

The problem is that kids aren't learning to differentiate between marijuana
and truly hard drugs, and that the marijuana prohibition condemns them to
an exposure to a potentially deadly black market. The teen rite of passage
typically goes: cigarettes, booze, pot. When the catastrophes predicted by
many parents, drug czars and programs like DARE fail to manifest themselves
as predicted, as is frequently the case, these young folk conclude that
everything they've been told is bunk.

Kids who would be content smoking a little reefer then become dangerously
vulnerable to a dealer offering free samples of crack, smack or ecstasy,
along with the news that "all your friends have tried it." Another youth is
thus needlessly exposed to a drug that can kill them inside of 15 minutes.

Many experts agree that the focus of the so-called war on drugs should be
on harm reduction. We can start by getting rid of this drug czar, before
his 20th-century views result in another young life lost to truly hard drugs.

Jim Severson

Willimantic