DRUG LAWS DO MORE HARM THAN DRUGS THEMSELVES

Dear Editor,

Clarence Page has called for a debate on cannabis laws. We could debate the
relative harm of legal and illegal drugs, cannabis being manifestly safer
than either tobacco or alcohol, but the real debate is the relative harm of
drugs and drug prohibition.

Our drug laws do far more harm than drugs could ever do by themselves,
especially cannabis. It make no sense to approach the problem of drug
abuse by adding to the harms associated with it unless the real motive is
to dehumanize and oppress others.

Harm reduction strategies are producing welcome results in places like the
Netherlands, Switzerland and California. The Dutch have successfully
uncoupled the soft and hard drug markets by the de facto decriminalisation
of cannabis and fewer of their young people are becoming heroin users as a
result. The Swiss have begun a heroin maintenance program for hard-core
addicts that has brought a virtual end to the prohibition-related crime
that once plagued them. California's new Proposition 36, which mandates
treatment instead of incarceration for drug offenders, has already reduced
the number of their female inmates by ten percent, saving the state big
money and keeping more families intact.

Clarence Page should have named the person or people he quoted as saying
nobody gets arrested for cannabis anymore. If somebody wants us to believe
that such arrests are a thing of the past, it should be taken as a tacit
admission that such arrests ought to be a thing of the past.

Larry A. Stevens

Springfield