GET SURREY OUT OF THE PROHIBITION BUSINESS

The best thing Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts and Attorney General Wally
Oppal can do to reduce "drug problems" is to get out of the
prohibition business.

No one was robbing, whoring and murdering to get drugs when addicts
could buy all of the heroin, morphine, cocaine and anything else they
wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy.

The term "drug crime" is an invention of drug crusaders trying to
cover the effects of their failed drug policy.

Proof that hard-line, American-style drug prohibition causes drug
deaths and drug crimes comes from the Swiss heroin maintenance program
where addicts are supplied with cheap, pure heroin and cocaine.

The Swiss have not had a single overdose death in the program and
injection-transmitted diseases (HIV/AIDS, Hep C, etc.) are now a
rarity in Switzerland.

Crime among Swiss addicts has dropped 97 per cent and the criminal
drug black market has vanished since the Swiss began providing addicts
with cheap legal drugs.

Swiss policy has also resulted in an 82 per cent decrease in heroin
addiction since 1990.

Besides these concrete benefits, the Swiss report saving over $100 a
day per addict in lower police, incarceration and health care
expenses. The Swiss are so pleased with the results of heroin
maintenance that they made this their national drug policy.

Drug warriors cannot claim similar success using jail cells to treat
addicts in Surrey or anywhere in the world since 1914. Anyone truly
concerned about the victims of drugs will work to end an immoral drug
crusade that murders thousands of people every year and spawns a
multitude of criminal activity.

Good intentions are no excuse for continuing a destructive drug
crusade.

REDFORD GIVENS

San Francisco