Pubdate: Thu, 24 Apr 2014
Source: Business Courier (OH)
Copyright: 2014 Thomas Vance
Contact:  http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/4618
Author: Thomas Vance

WASTING MONEY DOING THINGS WE KNOW DON'T WORK

The efforts of those wishing to get control of our heroin problem
should be praised. However, no program will be effective until we
change the basic policy on drug abuse that underlies our actions.
Prohibition as policy has been our guide for over 100 years, and in
that time we have had not one year which could be called a success.
The percentage of the population addicted to drugs stands at 1.3
percent, exactly the same as it was in 1914, when the Harrison Act
went into effect, exactly as it was in 1937 when the Marijuana Tax
Stamp Act was passed, exactly the same as it was when the 1970
Controlled Substances Act went into effect and President Richard Nixon
declared the War On Drugs.

There is another way. Portugal had all the same problems with drugs
and addiction as any other modern country. At a time when Portugal was
being squeezed by the economy and experiencing increasing HIV/AIDS
cases, they decided to abandon the old arrest-and-imprisonment policy
and go a different direction. Portugal in 2001 ended the crime of
possession and embarked on a new policy. Possessing and using small
amounts of drugs is no longer a crime. Persons caught with small
amounts of drugs, instead of having their drugs confiscated, are given
a citation and required to appear before a panel made up of a
psychologist, social worker and a legal adviser to assess treatment
options. Treatment can be refused without criminal sanction.

The policy is considered a resounding success. Rates of lifetime use
of any illegal drug among seventh-to ninth-graders fell from 14.1
percent to 10.6 percent. Lifetime heroin use fell from 2.5 percent to
1.8 percent. New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17 percent, and
deaths related to heroin and other drugs were cut by more than half.
The number of people in treatment for drug abuse doubled and money
saved on law enforcement was put back into rehab, making rehab
available to more citizens.

No policy will be successful if it's based on the old policy of
prohibition. We are just squeezing the sausage, and addicts will just
move to another drug and show up somewhere else. The crackdown on the
prescription drug abuse sausage probably caused the swelling of the
other end of the sausage into heroin abuse in the first place!

The current heroin bill is actually a pretty good start. The provision
for increased prison time for dealers, though, is just more of the
same thing we have been doing for 100 years. Longer incarceration has
been shown to have no effect on the number of addicts and only
increases judicial and prison costs. The other provisions are actually
a move toward what Portugal has done.

Instead of having us continue the same failed policy, propose a policy
that has worked and has a track record of success. Otherwise we are
just wasting more money doing things we already know don't work.

Thomas Vance,Alexandria
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