DRUG EDUCATION WOULD DO MORE THAN DRUG LAWS

Chicago -- With the arrival of the new year comes another casualty from the
war on drugs. This time it's not a police officer or a neighborhood; it's
the new laws aimed at curbing the use of the popular drug known as Ecstasy
("Tough club drug law in effect; New statutes now on state's books," Metro,
Jan. 1).

No matter how evaluated, the war on drugs must be labeled a complete
failure since its inception 15 years ago. Illegal drugs are easier to get
than ever.

The United States now imprisons more people than any other country. Entire
neighborhoods and even other countries have been devastated by the efforts
of dealers to make a buck in the highly profitable industry.

And there is no end in sight.

Instead our state legislature and governor have decided to drastically
increase the penalties for anyone caught dealing in Ecstasy. Their
justification for the new mandatory minimum laws is the desire to stop the
deaths of "all these kids" . . . because penalties were too light,
according to DuPage County State's Atty. Joseph Birkett.

Birkett's argument fails for two clear reasons. Nobody can sanely dispute
the notion that simply increasing the penalties for drug dealing does
nothing to decrease the use of drugs. The examples for this are painfully
obvious. Crack cocaine is readily available. LSD and marijuana continue to
be used by millions of people each year. Many heroin abuse centers
currently have waiting lists to get in.

Drugs are everywhere in our society, and simply locking up millions of
people has not changed that fact.

There will be no relief until our leaders face the reality that illegal
drug use will continue despite the penalty-oriented efforts of our war on
drugs.

The new laws for Ecstasy fail for an additional, troubling reason.
Relatively speaking, Ecstasy alone is not a killer drug. It's true that
people have died from using Ecstasy alone, but the numbers are extremely
small. Ecstasy is not a new drug that hasn't been researched yet.
Discovered in the mid-1980s, Ecstasy has been used in Europe for years.
Britain has classified the drug as a very low to minimal risk.
Switzerland's Supreme Court has labeled Ecstasy a soft drug (the same
classification of marijuana).

The point of this letter is not that Ecstasy isn't dangerous. It can be
very dangerous, especially when laced with another substance or taken with
other drugs. The point is that educating the public about the dangers of
Ecstasy would be a better use of public funds than simply incarcerating
another million citizens. Not only would drug education be cheaper and more
civil that mandating penalties for non-violent offenses, it would save more
lives--maybe even your son's or daughter's.