Pubdate: Wed, 07 Feb 2007
Source: Bermuda Sun (Bermuda)
Copyright: 2005 Bermuda Sun
Contact:  http://www.bermudasun.bm/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3865
Author: D. W. Robinson JP
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)

IT'S TIME WE TOOK A MORE PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO DRUG POLICY

Dear Sir,

It was only a matter of time before health professionals would 
publicly advocate progressive drug policy as the pharmacists have in 
seeking needle exchange [BDA Sun, Friday, February 2]. I bet that 
their stand is based on witnessing suffering in the community and 
scientific research-based evidence that their proposed solution 
actually reduces suffering.

Great step in the right direction but a relatively small one since 
other communities put needle exchange into practice decades ago.

I do hope that health officials will listen to and promote the BPA 
proposal and that the minister will find support in Cabinet when he 
takes the matter forward.

When the Bermuda Government follows this eminently sensible course 
perhaps it will be in the mood to consider other progressive avenues, 
which extend the rational and humane approach it started with 
Alternatives To Incarceration (ATI).

Then it will move our drug policy further away from being in lock 
step with the Americans, who we love, but who have implemented 
disastrous drug policy.

The time has surely come to adopt an overall strategy of basing drug 
policy on research-based, scientifically supported and humane action.

Look to the pragmatic actions of other governments. For a start, 
recognize the vast differences between 'hard' and 'soft' drugs and 
implement policy accordingly.

There is a mountain of evidence suggesting that if our children/youth 
are experimenting with drugs, (and 75 per cent of Bermuda College 
students apparently have) then we should greatly prefer them doing so 
with pot than with methamphetamines or heroin or crack cocaine.

Yet our failed prohibition drug policies actually encourage 'hard' 
drugs by making them as available, if not more so, than 'soft' drugs 
(just as prohibition in the U.S. made hard liquor more available than 
it ever has been since prohibition, while beer and wine could not be 
found at all). No laws need to change, just policy. Just as the 
Commissioner of Police sets the limit over which officers ticket 
speeders, at say 50kph, so our Director of Public Prosecutions should 
be encouraged to prosecute only those pot possession arrests 
exceeding a certain limit, say an ounce. We have the power to stop 
our youth from being put on the stop-list.

D. W. Robinson JP

St George's
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman