Pubdate: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 Source: Traverse City Record-Eagle (MI) Copyright: 2002 The Traverse City Record-Eagle Contact: http://www.record-eagle.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1336 Author: Redford Givens Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n018/a08.html?1317 REPEAL DRUG POLICY This is concerning your Jan. 4 editorial, "Grand Traverse County's Drug Court is worth a try." After over 88 years of utter failure it is utterly insane to suggest that "drug courts" can make America's lunatic drug prohibition scheme work. A more practical course would be to repeal a counterproductive drug policy that causes more troubles than the drugs by themselves ever did or ever could do. History proves that America's drug war is unnecessary because 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 teetotaling neighbors. Overdoses were virtually unheard of when addicts used cheap pure Bayer Heroin instead of the expensive toxic potions prohibition puts on the streets (See: The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm). Where drug crime was unheard-of, we now have prisons overflowing with drug users. Where addicts lived normal lives, we have hundreds of thousands of shattered families. Where overdoses were extremely rare, we have tens of thousands of drug deaths every year. The addiction rate is now five times greater than when we had no laws at all. These are the consequences of criminalizing drug use, not the effects of using the drugs themselves. Drug courts are desperate drug warriors' way of delaying the inevitable repeal of drug prohibition because of its counterproductive nature. It's worth remembering that Eliot Ness and the revenuers never put the booze barons out of business. Repeal and a regulated market for adult alcohol use did that. Regulation works for alcohol and regulation will work for drugs. Prohibition, on the other hand, has never worked for anything, anywhere, anytime. Redford Givens, San Francisco - --- MAP posted-by: Derek