DRUG WAR CONTINUES, MOSTLY ON MARIJUANA

Editor, The News:

Re: Junkie's blues (News Views, June 5)

There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes.

And that's all the more reason to stress the need for adequate needle
exchange programs, and how this is of such critical importance to any
community.

No city can afford to be underfunding or, in any way diminishing this
aspect of harm reduction. Being especially cognizant of this is critical in
light of the fact that Vancouver set WORLD records for drug-overdose
deaths, HIV and hepatitis C infections.

Of primary importance is the dire need for all levels of government to go
beyond considering alternatives and making only token gestures to actually
start implementing holistic programs that work. If that means less monies
for law enforcement and, substantially more into 'harm reduction' programs,
so be it. If it means legitimizing cannabis and using any revenue garnered
from that, so be it.

Cannabis, doesn't spread HIV or cause cirrhosis of the liver, nor does it
ravage the body or give rise to violent crime.

In that the RCMP's Drug Situation in Canada Report for 2001 states that
heroin seizures were down by more than half from 2000 yet cannabis seizures
increased, is there any wonder as to why Vancouver set world records for
drug-overdose deaths, HIV and hepatitis C infections?

This doesn't even begin to figure cocaine and crack into the equation.

Wayne Phillips,

Hamilton, Ontario

'Prison State' in U.S.

Editor, The News:

Re: Needle and the damage done (letters, June 5).

The reason that Laurie Geschke hangs out the Netherlands, Switzerland, and
Germany as "bad" examples in the drug war, and Sweden as a model of
prohibition, is that she longs for that perfect society where there are no
drugs, including the ones that are legal now.

But the reality is that drugs are everywhere. However, some countries deal
with their drug situation without building a prison state and the last time
anyone looked, the three "bad" countries are doing fine, but with fewer
people in prison. Clearly, they have not been destroyed by their
intelligent and humane drug policies.

In spite of all the crocodile tears about impressionable youth and lessened
productivity, the war on drugs is ruled by the bottom line. The cops, the
lawyers, judges, jailers, drug testing companies, prison suppliers,
virtually all within reach help themselves to the never-ending torrent of
tax money, shoveled out by the government as it pursues its failed drug
policy like an out-of-control train.

While drug warriors like Geschke are fond of talking about heroin, cocaine,
and AIDS, they avoid the fact that the war on drugs is primarily a war on
marijuana. Last year there were about 800,000 marijuana arrests in the
U.S., and that's where the money is. Sure, every so often the cops bust a
cartel and seize a ton of cocaine, but that doesn't mean money because they
can't sell it.

The money is in the small day-to-day pot busts with the pleadings and the
fines, the forfeitures, apart from the cost of the defence. As the offender
loses property and pays through the nose, everybody gets paid again: the
cops, the informers, the lawyers, shrinks and counselors, court clerks, and
hordes of others.

And all this supposedly for that person's own good! What an racket! No
wonder it's so hard to kill this drug war snake. It has a lot of hangers-on.

Harry D. Fisher

Woodland Hills, California