Drug Czar Demonstrates Ignorance Of Reform PLEASE COPY AND DISTRIBUTE DrugSense FOCUS Alert # 247July 23, 2002 Federal drug czars aren't hired to solve drug problems - they are hired to maintain drug prohibition. If you had any doubt about this, check the recent oped piece by John Walters in the Wall Street Journal. Walters starts by equating any reform with legalization, and the truth quotient goes downhill from there. For an excellent line by line analysis (and correction) of Walters's lies and obfuscations, see Richard Cowan's commentary atMarijuananews.com this week - http://www.marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=558 Please write a letter to the Wall Street Journal to say that the drug war is bad enough without John Walters's prohibition of honest criticism. Thanks for your effort and support. WRITE A LETTER TODAY It's not what others do it's what YOU do PLEASE SEND US A COPY OF YOUR LETTER OR TELL US WHAT YOU DID (Letter, Phone, fax etc.) Please post a copy your letter or report your action to the sent letter list () if you are subscribed, or by E-mailing a copy directly to if you are not subscribed. Your letter will then be forwarded to the list with so others can learn from your efforts and be motivated to follow suit. Subscribing to the Sent LTE list () will help you to review other sent LTEs and perhaps come up with new ideas or approaches as well as keeping others aware of your important writing efforts. To subscribe to the Sent LTE mailing list see http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm and/or http://www.mapinc.org/lists/index.htm#form This is VERY IMPORTANT as it is one very effective way of gauging our impact and effectiveness. CONTACT INFO Source: Wall Street Journal (US) Contact: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Pubdate: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 Source: Wall Street Journal (US) Copyright: 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Contact: Website: http://www.wsj.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487 Author: John P. Walters Note: Mr. Walters is director of the National Office of Drug-Control Policy. Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/walters.htm (Walters, John) DON'T LEGALIZE DRUGS The charge that "nothing works" in the fight against illegal drugs has led some people to grasp at an apparent solution: legalize drugs . They will have taken false heart from news from Britain last week, where the government acted to downgrade the possession of cannabis to the status of a non-arrestable offense. According to the logic of the legalizers, it's laws against drug use, not the drugs themselves, that do the greatest harm. The real problem, according them, is not that the young use drugs , but that drug laws distort supply and demand. Violent cartels arise, consumers overpay for a product of unknown quality, and society suffers when the law restrains those who "harm no one but themselves." Better, the argument goes, for the government to control the trade in narcotics. That should drive down the prices (heroin would be "no more expensive than lettuce," argues one proponent), eliminate violence, provide tax revenue, reduce prison crowding, and foster supervised injection facilities. Sounds good. But is it realistic? The softest spot in this line of reasoning is the analogy with alcohol abuse. The argument goes roughly like this: "Alcohol is legal. Alcohol can be abused. Therefore, cocaine should be legal." Their strongest argument, by contrast, is that prohibition produces more costs than benefits, while legalized drugs provide more benefits than costs. But legalizers overstate the social costs of prohibition, just as they understate the social costs of legalization. Take the statistic that more than 1.5 million Americans are arrested every year for drug crimes. Legalizers would have us believe that otherwise innocent people are being sent to prison (displacing "true" criminals) for merely toking up. But only a fraction of these arrestees are ever sentenced to prison. And there should be little question that most of those sentenced have earned their place behind bars. Some 24% of state prison drug offenders are violent recidivists, while 83% have prior criminal histories. Only 17% are in prison for "first time offenses," while nominal "low-level" offenders are often criminals who plea-bargain to escape more serious charges. The reality is that a high percentage of all criminals, regardless of the offense, use drugs . In New York, 79% of those arrested for any crime tested positive for drugs . Drug abuse alone cost an estimated $55 billion in 1998 (excluding criminal justice costs), and deaths directly related to drug use have more than doubled since 1980. Would increasing this toll make for a healthier America? Legalization, by removing penalties and reducing price, would increase drug demand. Make something easier and cheaper to obtain, and you increase the number of people who will try it. Legalizers love to point out that the Dutch decriminalized marijuana in 1976, with little initial impact. But as drugs gained social acceptance, use increased consistently and sharply, with a 300% rise in use by 1996 among 18-20 year-olds. Britain, too, provides an instructive example. When British physicians were allowed to prescribe heroin to certain addicts, the number skyrocketed. From 68 British addicts in the program in 1960, the problem exploded to an estimated 20,000 heroin users in London alone by 1982. The idea that we can "solve" our complex drug problem by simply legalizing drugs raises more questions than it answers. For instance, what happens to the citizenship of those legally addicted? Will they have their full civil rights, such as voting? Can they be employed as school bus drivers? Nurses? What of a woman, legally addicted to cocaine, who becomes pregnant? Should she be constrained by the very government that provides for her habit? Won't some addicts seek larger doses than those medically prescribed? Or seek to profit by selling their allotment to others, including minors? And what about those promised tax revenues -- how do they materialize? As it is, European drug clinics aren't filled with productive citizens, but rather with demoralized zombies seeking a daily fix. Won't drugs become a disability entitlement? Will legalization eliminate violence? The New England Journal of Medicine reported in 1999 on the risks for women injured in domestic violence. The most striking factor was a partner who used cocaine, which increased risk more than four times. That violence is associated not with drug laws, but with the drug . A 1999 report from the Department of Health and Human Services showed that two million children live with a parent who has a drug problem. Studies indicate that up to 80% of our child welfare caseload involves caregivers who abuse substances. Drug users do not harm only themselves. Legalizers like to argue that government-supervised production and distribution of addictive drugs will eliminate the dangers attributed to drug prohibition. But when analyzing this "harm reduction" argument, consider the abuse of the opiate OxyContin, which has resulted in numerous deaths, physicians facing criminal charges, and addicts attacking pharmacies. OxyContin is a legally prescribed substance, with appropriate medical uses -- that is, it satisfies those conditions legalizers envision for cocaine and heroin. The point is clear: The laws are not the problem. Former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan observed that drugs place us in a dilemma: "We are required to choose between a crime problem and a public heath problem." Legalization is a dangerous mirage. To address a crime problem, we are asked to accept a public health crisis. Yet if we were to surrender, we would surely face both problems -- intensified. ADDITIONAL INFO to help you in your letter writing efforts 3 Tips for Letter Writers http://www.mapinc.org/3tips.htm Letter Writers Style Guide http://www.mapinc.org/style.htm SAMPLE LETTER (SENT) To the editor of the Wall Street Journal: Drug czar Walters used a familiar rhetorical ploy to defend the drug war in Friday's Journal (Don't Legalize Drugs, 19 July 2002). First, misrepresent the most damaging charges; then lie while dispatching the straw men thus created. Critics haven't claimed 'nothing works;' rather, they point out US policy is clearly failing-- and 73% of the public agrees. Worse, while those failures are being brazenly ignored, even more money and manpower are squandered and collateral social damage continues. Nor did critics claim drug laws 'distort supply and demand.' Our policy's worst effects-- as has been repeatedly pointed out-- flow from the illegal markets our laws create as lucrative criminal monopolies. Although many such ploys were used, space allows just one more example; Walters' claim that, deaths directly related to drug use have more than doubled since 1980, and the question if, increasing this toll (would) make for a healthier America. First, the numbers aren't comparable because criteria for such deaths were arbitrarily changed in the interval; also Public Health experts attribute fifty percent of drug deaths directly to their illegality. Finally; how do Walters' repeated claims of policy success square with increased deaths? Wouldn't a successful policy have reduced them? It's reassuring that recent rhetoric attributing corporate fraud to a few bad apples is neither unique nor unprecedented; we are led to fear however, that devious federal rhetoric in defence of regulatory failure may have quietly become a 'traditional American value' while we weren't looking. Tom O'Connell, MD IMPORTANT: Always remember to include your address and phone number. NOTE: If you choose to use this letter as a model please modify it at least somewhat so that the paper does not receive numerous copies of the same letter and so that the original author receives credit for his/her work. TARGET ANALYSIS - Wall Street Journal There are more than 75 letters to the WSJ in the MAP archive. A sampling of recent letters shows some as short as 93 words and some as long as 340 words, with an average of about 180 words. The published letters can be viewed here: http://www.mapinc.org/mapcgi/ltedex.pl?SOURCE=Wall+Street+Journal+(US) TO SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, OR UPDATE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS: Please utilize the following URLs http://www.drugsense.org/hurry.htm http://www.drugsense.org/unsub.htm We wish to thank all our contributors, editors, Newshawks and letter writing activists. NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. REMINDER: Please help MAP find news articles. Details at http://www.mapinc.org/hawk.htm = NOW YOU CAN DONATE TO DRUGSENSE ONLINE AND IT'S TAX DEDUCTIBLE DrugSense provides many services to at no charge BUT THEY ARE NOT FREE TO PRODUCE. We incur many costs in creating our many and varied services. If you are able to help by contributing to the DrugSense effort visit our convenient donation web site at http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm -OR- Mail in your contribution. Make checks payable to MAP Inc. send your contribution to: The Media Awareness Project (MAP) Inc. d/b/a DrugSense PO Box 651 Porterville, CA 93258 (800) 266 5759 http://www.mapinc.org/ http://www.drugsense.org/ Just DO It!! Prepared by Stephen Young -www.maximizingharm.com DrugSense FOCUS Alert Specialist

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