THE WAR ON DRUGS

Last Friday, the body of local rock musician Layne Staley was discovered
here in the U-District, just up the street from my house. Though heroin
paraphernalia was found near his body, it took some time before an overdose
was determined as the cause of death.

But who are we kidding? Of course it was a drug overdose. Anyone who
followed Staley's career even peripherally knows how he struggled with
heroin, and it was his addiction that forced his band Alice in Chains to a
halt.

In latter years, Staley's life mirrored that of many other addicts: caught
in the throes of addiction, yet unable to receive adequate treatment due to
funds being allocated to policing rather than treating. Like many addicts,
Staley was perhaps looking at jail time just for possession. Anyone will
tell you that each time you quit a drug as seductive and addictive as
heroin, you are far less likely to quit if you return to it again. A fear
of getting caught by police only adds to the burden of addiction. You can't
think about getting help for yourself if you're endlessly worried about
going to jail for a possible 20 years or more, just for possession.

In the Netherlands and other European countries such as Sweden, there is a
system of government-sponsored legalized drug use based on what is known as
"harm reduction." It's sponsored by the governments because they have a
sensible, realistic approach when it comes to addiction: You cannot force
people to stop using drugs. That's why it's called addiction.

Instead of funding ludicrous policing organizations such as D.A.R.E., the
government allows all drugs, even cocaine and heroin, to be used by those
citizens who want to use them. Harm reduction is effective because, knowing
that the drugs are legal to use and possess, an addict can go about his or
her day as an addict, and still function. While there is a tax on the
drugs, what is up to a $400-a-day habit under drug prohibition amounts to
substantially less under harm-reduction policy.

For those who choose (and that is the operative word) to try to get off
drugs, the money saved from policing addicts and dealers is funneled to
treatment centers that are far superior to ones in countries where drugs
are illegal. Money is also funneled to places where addicts can go and get
clean, free, sterile needles, to avoid spreading AIDS and blood-borne
pathogens. This does not happen in a country such as the United States,
where lawmakers and the dunces who support them have outmoded ideas about
how to correct this problem.

Let me make this simple

Though it is illegal to sell, buy, use, manufacture or possess drugs and
drug paraphernalia in America, drugs are still astoundingly easy to
acquire. And when something's easy to acquire yet illegal, a black market
invariably comes into existence. Always and without fail. In the `30s,
Prohibition didn't work, because underneath all the spit-shine and moral
debates, the glaring fact remained that alcohol was and is a vice that
people want and will go through anyone and pay any amount to get -- even
mob prices.

When the criminal element becomes involved, what is sure to follow is the
loss of innocent life.

The drug war is pure, absolute, patented bullshit. It's not the answer
because it doesn't work. It doesn't work because it is rooted in morality,
and being addicted to drugs is not about morality. It's about people who
are sick, and throwing sick people in jail is not a way to cure them.