Pubdate: Fri, 31 Mar 2000
Source: International Herald-Tribune
Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2000
Contact:  http://www.iht.com/
Author: James P. Gray
Note: The writer, a Superior Court judge in Orange County, California, 
contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.

QUESTIONS FOR THE CHIEF OF THE WAR ON DRUGS

LOS ANGELES - Recently, General Barry McCaffrey, the U.S. drug-policy 
chief, was invited to Southern California for a debate. He said all he had 
time to do was give a speech and answer a few questions.

My question was: Many people in California feel that the federal government 
is closed-minded, even arrogant, in dealing with medical marijuana. The 
voters here approved Proposition 215 by a wide margin, allowing sick people 
to use marijuana as medicine if it was recommended to them by a doctor, and 
similar measures have passed in four other states and the District -of 
Columbia. Will you now do what you can to cause the U.S. government to 
allow the will of the voters in these states to prevail?

General McCaffrey's answer was, in essence, that since in his mind 
marijuana was not a medicine, the voters in all of these states could pound 
sand.

The anti-drug chief has now gone back to Washington. But there remain many 
other critical questions I want to ask him about the failed U.S. war on drugs:

*Have you considered that the enormous problems in countries like 
Afghanistan, Colombia, Mexico and Peru are really not caused by drugs as 
such but by drug prohibition? That is, the problems conic directly from the 
money obtained from the sale of these drugs. So couldn't we come up with 
some way of deprofitizing the drugs? This will probably not have any 
adverse effect upon the availability of the dangerous drugs, even to our 
children or to people in prison, because under the present policy the drugs 
are already fully available. But if money could be taken out of the 
equation, U.S. troops and treasures would not need be sent to these 
countries to fight unwinnable wars.

*Have you considered that since all neutral studies have shown that 
programs of needle exchange for drug-addicted people - which allow a dirty 
needle and syringe to be exchanged for a clean one with no money changing 
hands and no questions asked do not increase drug usage but do greatly 
reduce the transmission of the AIDS virus, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and 
other diseases both to the ug users and to their sexual partners and to the 
babies of women drug users? Since these programs have been endorsed by 
organizations like the American Medical Association, the Centers for 
Disease Control, the National Commission on AIDS and the General Accounting 
Office, as well as by the secretary of health and human services, will the 
U.S. government now finally change laws that make them illegal?

*Do you know what other countries around the world are doing about these 
problems? Are you aware that Switzerland, in an effort to reduce the harm 
caused by these dangerous drugs, has implemented pilot programs for drug 
maintenance in 15 cities? The programs give addicts access to lowcost 
pharmaceutical morphine, heroin and methadone, which can be injected under 
medical supervision in licensed medical clinics. The programs have been so 
successful in reducing crime in the neighborhoods surrounding the clinics 
and increasing the health and employment of the clients that more than 70 
percent of the Swiss voters opposed an initiative that would have abolished 
them. Since reducing crime and increasing general health and employability 
of people are good things, why has the United States not established 
similar programs?

*Don't you realize that the U.S. war on drugs is not working, and that 
prohibitionist policies are significantly adding to the problems in 
Southern California, as well as around the country and the world? Don't you 
realize, that just because some people talk about changing U.S. policy does 
not mean that they condone the use or abuse of these dangerous drugs?

*Finally, since you control a federal budget that has just been increased 
from $17.8 billion last year to $19.2 billion this year, is asking people 
like you if the United States should continue with the current drug policy 
like a person asking a barber if one needs a haircut?

These are some of the questions I would have asked the U.S. spokesman for 
the status quo, if only he had had the time.

The writer, a Superior Court judge in Orange County, California, 
contributed this comment to the Los Angeles Times.
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