PROHIBITING DRUGS, PROMOTING CRIME

What will it take for our elected officials to realize that our approach to
drug addiction obviously isn't working?

I just read about a Gardenville man who carjacked the Stroup family and its
three young children, holding a knife to the throat of a 10- year-old
during a botched robbery ("Gardenville man pleads guilty to armed
carjacking and kidnapping of family," Aug. 7).

The reason this family went through such an ordeal is because the attacker
was a heroin addict trying to get money to feed his addiction.

Unfortunately, in the United States we treat the serious health problem of
heroin addiction as a criminal problem. In essence, our laws make criminals
out of addicts. If there was a legal way to obtain heroin, families such as
the Stroups wouldn't have to experience such violence.

Laws and policies must change. As long as heroin is illegal, addicts will
be criminals, and 10-year-olds will have knives held to their throats.

Daniel Poling,

Baltimore