WE ALREADY KNOW THAT PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK

John Walters, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, was
quoted in the Saturday P-I as saying, "Americans must confront drug use --
and therefore drug users, honestly and directly." I agree. Thoughtful
people have agreed for years. In 1980 the Drug Abuse Council reported that
"to state it plainly, the challenge facing America regarding drugs is to
determine how best to live with the inevitable availability of psychoactive
drugs while mitigating the harmful aspects of their misuse." Drug
prohibition has had the same effects as alcohol prohibition had in the past
century. Alcohol prohibition caused a rise in violent crime, injury to the
population due to contaminated products, corruption of law enforcement and
a breakdown of general respect for the law. Prohibition of alcohol caused a
temporary drop in alcohol usage for the first five years, and then usage
increased steadily every year after that until Prohibition was ended. When
Prohibition was ended, violent crime dropped 65 percent in the following
year. Drug usage has risen steadily during the past 10 years. The number of
citizens who reported use of an illicit drug in the past month rose 11
percent in 2001, from 6.3 percent of all citizens over the age of 12 to 7.1
percent. Twenty percent of young adults regularly use an illicit drug,
mostly marijuana. Eighty-eight percent of high school seniors report that
it is easy to get drugs in their school. Our current approach does not
prevent usage of drugs or access to drugs by schoolchildren. Rather, it is
a waste of $40 billion a year. We need to ask ourselves if the ONDCP is
being honest and direct with us when it insists that prohibition is an
approach that works.

Andrew Brunette Bellevue