EUROPEAN APPROACH WORKS

RE: 'Cocaine fuels rise in crime' (March 19). I was interested in the
comments attributed to Hamilton police in describing their efforts to get
at the root of the city's crime and drug problem.

They state that crimes are committed by addicts desperate to pay for their
addiction. Therefore, they deduce, law enforcement must go after the drug
users.

How unfortunate that we stop at that level rather than getting to the root
of the problem: prohibition. If there were no prohibition, the price of the
legal supply would be reasonable and the addict could afford his/her
addiction without resorting to property crime.

The British proved that this approach worked when they had a program of
heroin prescription, and there is a movement afoot to reinstate it. The
Dutch model has proven that, when drug users aren't persecuted, crime rates
drop. And the Swiss have reduced crime and societal problems by supplying
heroin to addicts and returning them to society's mainstream.

These methods recognize that being human means making mistakes, and
persecution for mistakes that harm nobody else leads to bigger problems for
society and the individual.

If police endorsed revising North American approaches to drug use to bring
them more in line with European methods, we'd all be better off.

Bruce Symington, Medicine Hat, Alberta.