LEGALIZATION WILL CONTROL ACCESS

I am responding to the recent letter by Toby Hinton who writes from his
perspective of 13 years as a police officer in Vancouver's downtown
eastside that legalizing marijuana will not solve drug problems". It seems
that his experience of the worst aspects of the situation has done little
to provide him with any real insight into the situation.

He states, for example, that one of the worst drug he deals with is
alcohol, another one being nicotine.

I have no doubt that those whose arguments he seeks to rebut would
certainly agree on that point. However, Hinton fails to recognize that the
vast majority of people who use alcohol (as opposed to abuse) do so without
ill effect.

True alcoholics are only a small portion of alcohol users and we have
learned through history that a harm-reduction approach (education,
regulation, licensing of outlets) has been far more effective than driving
it underground, as in prohibition. As for nicotine, we recognize, too, that
it is the most addictive of all the drugs and indeed cigarettes create a
huge health cost. Why doesn't Hinton suggests the converse of his argument
- -- that we prohibit these substances? Because he knows, or ought to know
that such a cure was demonstrably worse than the disease.

Moreover, in talking of the worst aspects of addictions as he does, Hinton
misrepresents the extent of the problem.

While, as he says, the situation may be much more complex than suggested by
the letter he criticizes, I suggest that it is much more complex than even
he, from his limited perspective as a beat cop, can imagine.

The fact is, for example, that heroin addiction in Britain was successfully
dealt with for 80 years until Margaret Thatcher led that country into a
disastrous U.S.-style drug war at which time deaths from overdose
skyrocketed within weeks.

Britain now has the worst drug problem in Europe and Mo Mowlam,the former
British "drugs czar," is now advocating legalization of all drugs. And many
of their police, unlike the moralistically hidebound Canadian Police
Association, have been advocating for at least decriminalization of
marijuana. Hinton says "the key to helping an addict does not lie in
unfettered access to cheap drugs.

The only real solution is to remove the drugs from the user's life." This
tough-love approach does not work and is precisely the reason the war and
drugs has been seen to fail and has given the United States an
incarceration rate almost seven times that of Canada, and 10 times that of
Holland. But no one on the legalization end of things is talking unfettered
cheap access to drugs.

We are talking something much more sensible -- control, regulation,
education (not indoctrination of the ridiculous DARE variety) and treatment
for those who need it. With regard to marijuana, the vast majority use it
with little or no ill effect and do not become addicted.

Only a tiny number do, and it is questionable whether even that is true
addiction.

Moreover, it is not a gateway drug, and in the words of the Canadian
Senate, this is a crusade that has got to stop. It's time our police
zealots stopped parroting the ideology of the the U.S. drug czar and the
Drug Enforcement Agency. If you really examine their arguments, they are
still just a sophisticated rehashing of some of the old "reefer madness"
arguments and are becoming increasingly hysterical.

Brian L. Fish

Edmonton