ISSUE 3 IS MERELY A BIG SMOKESCREEN

Trying to summarize my objections to Issue 3, I would mention that it would
take a very vivid imagination to turn the actual success rate of our drug
treatment programs into anything remotely related to success.

And these programs are very expensive. They are merely a Band-Aid on a huge
hard drug problem. They serve very few. They can make the health-care
conglomerates richer, and drain public resources. It seems to me, in short,
that the advertising for Issue 3 is a smokescreen.

Our whole country is on a budget now, because of the tax cuts and the war.
Maybe that old saying about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of
cure, maybe we should think about that. I believe that a dollar spent on
drug enforcement (prevention) is more efficacious than 10 times that amount
spent on treatment.

We cannot ignore that with all camps getting into the picture -
anti-tobacco, anti-alcohol, etc. - funds are diverted, interest is divided,
and why are we attacking the legal drugs anyhow, while the "death" dealers
of crack and other hard drugs trade openly?

This issue failed before, partly because many believe that the best use of
public funds must be the concentration of those funds on prevention, on
(illegal) hard-drug enforcement programs.

Consider this: The patient walks out of COMPASS on Collingwood Avenue, his
treatment program completed, and immediately he has the hard drugs right
there in his face again.

DON KELLER Foxbourne Road