Pubdate: Fri, 12 May 2000 Source: Santa Maria Sun (CA) Copyright: 2000 Santa Maria Sun Contact: 1954-L South Broadway Santa Maria, CA 93454 Fax: 805-347-9889 Website: http://www.santamariasun.com/ Author: Redford Givens Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n556/a09.html THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DRUG WAR People would have a better understanding of drug prohibition if newspapers told the truth about the effects of our lunatic drug laws. Instead of regurgitating government propaganda, the way your reporter John Dean does ("Is Santa Maria losing its war on drugs?" the Sun, April 21). Mr. Dean dutifully reports about police stepping up drug sweeps and being "educated" with a seven-step process for identifying meth users and tells us about the expanded use of "drug courts" without ever explaining that these measures have not lowered drug abuse. If Mr. Dean really wants to educate us about solutions to our drug prohibition-created problems, he might start with the fact that no one was robbing, whoring, and murdering over drugs when addicts could buy all of the heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium, and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. When drugs were legal, addicts held regular employment, raised decent families, and were indistinguishable from their teetotalling neighbors. Overdoses were virtually unheard of when addicts used cheap, pure Bayer Heroin instead of the expensive toxic potions that prohibition puts on the streets. Readers may want to go online to the Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs at www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm to read more about this. Where drug crime was unheard of, we now have prisons overflowing with drug users. Where addicts lived normal lives, we now have hundreds of thousands of shattered families. And where overdoses were extremely rare, we now have tens of thousands of drug deaths each year. The addiction rate is now five times greater than when we had no laws at all, and now 19-year-olds are the fastest growing group of heroin users. John Dean never mentions that all of the real problems we have with drugs have been created by lunatic drug crusaders more concerned with their own careers than with the public welfare. Redford Givens, San Francisco - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D