Pubdate: Sun, 04 Mar 2001 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) Copyright: 2001 The Dallas Morning News Contact: P.O. Box 655237, Dallas, Texas 75265 Fax: (972) 263-0456 Feedback: http://dmnweb.dallasnews.com/letters/ Website: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Forum: http://forums.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/wwwthreads.pl Author: Suzi Wills, DPFT 'DRUG WAR' LOSING GROUND Re: "Justice system has a critical role in drug treatment," Viewpoints, Feb. 25. William Bennett says "Prevention ... entails making drugs scarcer, more expensive and less pure. When drugs are more readily available, more people try them and more people become addicted." If making drugs scarcer, more expensive and less pure is the measure of success of the drug war, it should be brought to a screeching halt. Since Richard Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973, illegal drugs have become more available, less expensive and more pure. Most people in Plano had never known anyone who used heroin in 1973. Now their kids buy heroin so pure it can be smoked instead of injected. Drug prohibition does make drug purity unreliable. During alcohol prohibition teenagers died from drinking poison bootleg. Today the drug of choice for teenagers is MDMA (ecstasy). By far the greatest danger in using ecstasy is that the tablet won't be ecstasy. The risks of taking/using a known substance are manageable, primarily exhaustion and dehydration in the case of MDMA. But death has occurred when kids inadvertently bought PMA or PMMA and heat stroke has occurred when dextromethorphan was substituted. There is no evidence that more people would become addicted if drugs were legally available. The rate of addiction to narcotics remained relatively stable throughout the 20th century regardless of the law. The Dutch are famous for their legal marijuana yet their rate of marijuana use is less than ours and their rate of heroin addiction is one-third of ours. Drug prohibition has done none of the things that Mr. Bennett claims he wants. Instead it has endangered the American people by fostering crime, corruption and violence and created the largest, most expensive prison system the world has ever known. SUZANNE WILLS Drug Policy Forum of Texas Dallas - --- MAP posted-by: Beth