Pubdate: Sun, 24 Aug 2014
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2014 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://services.bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://bostonglobe.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Jack Cole
Note: Jack Cole was a police officer for 26 years and is now board 
chair of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of police, 
prosecutors, judges, and other law enforcement officials. He lives in Medford.

END THE PROHIBITION OF HEROIN

A Cop's Experience Tells Him the Drug War Is Doing More Harm Than Good

FOR 14 of the 26 years I served with the New Jersey State Police, I 
worked undercover narcotics. On the job, I saw first-hand the 
addictive power of opiates. Yet I also came to understand that the 
destruction of whole communities did not primarily result from the 
use or misuse of those drugs. No, the damage came from people - cops 
- - doing what I did: dragging buyers and sellers away from their 
families and slamming them into the criminal justice system, 
depriving both them and their neighborhoods of all hope. I witnessed 
people we disparagingly called "junkies" dying with needles in their 
arms not because heroin is a poison but because the heroin was 
poisoned. I did more harm than good, and the harder my colleagues and 
I tried, the more damage we did.

Today, the relentless, appalling loss of life associated with heroin 
and other dangerous drugs has become commonplace. As a police 
officer, I understand the instinct to mete out punishment, send a 
message, put somebody away for abusing drugs. Nonetheless, my 
experience has shown me that it is futile, counterproductive, and 
dangerous to try to arrest our way out of this very real problem.

Heroin's status as a Schedule I illegal drug has ceded its control 
and distribution to the most unscrupulous and unregulated players 
among us with the predictably tragic results. Prohibition has 
completely failed to curb either supply or demand for opiates. It has 
not only failed to protect our young and vulnerable, but also cost 
many their lives - deaths from heroin overdose alone have increased 
ninefold since the drug war began. The whole family of opiates is 
dangerous, seductive, and addictive under the best of circumstances, 
but when the circumstances are defined by a destabilizing 
cat-and-mouse game for those in the thrall of addiction, those 
dangers are intensified.

Indeed, the costs of the drug war have been enormous and with nothing 
to show in terms of increasing public safety. The US judicial system 
is overwhelmed with drug offenses. Yet, in just one example, Edward 
Walsh, Taunton's police chief, recently admitted that a high-profile 
- - and presumably resource-intensive - arrest of a major dealer failed 
to reduce either drug use or street prices, and that is precisely the 
opposite of what drug warriors promise. Other cities, such as 
Chicago, have suffered from Al Capone-like street violence. And after 
nearly a half century of the US as the arrest capital of the world, 
the endless cycle in and out of our prisons shows little sign of slowing.

Draconian drug laws have also done little to improve public health. 
That's easy to see by comparing the impact of heroin to that of 
another potentially lethal substance, alcohol.

If users know how much heroin they are consuming, and that their 
heroin is uncontaminated, they do not overdose. But Worcester police 
chief Gary Gemme has noted that today's street heroin - often mixed 
with other substances so dealers can maximize their profits - is of 
such unpredictable purity that users are endangered every time they 
take a hit. Alcohol, because we are able to regulate it, carries no 
similar risk. Both casual and addicted drinkers know what they're 
getting; quality control and purity are non-issues. There is no 
"epidemic" of "baffling" deaths related to alcohol. And there has 
been no underground, black-market economy built up around street 
dealers pushing alcohol on our children.

The good news is that there are better, more effective models than 
zero-tolerance prohibition. As opiate addiction is increasingly 
recognized as a suburban, as well as an inner city problem, we are 
seeing the birth of more non-judgmental approaches that include open 
dialogue about stigmatization and increased availability of health 
insurance to cover treatment programs - and these changes have borne 
fruit. That has certainly been the case as more and more police 
officers carry and use the overdose reversal drug, naloxone, saving 
countless lives.

On the global scene, six countries - including Australia, Canada, and 
Germany - have introduced supervised injection sites where people 
sadly but safely meet their heroin addiction. This has dramatically 
reduced the risk of blood diseases related to illicit drug use, such 
as hepatitis C and HIV, and it has eliminated overdose deaths at those sites.

Drug addiction is a manageable disease and societal issue as long as 
we help, not hunt, those suffering from it. And once we stop the 
endless chase, these vulnerable people can finally focus on getting 
their disorganized lives together and begin the long process of recovery.

If, instead, we insist on continuing the grandstanding approach of 
being "tough on drugs," we will only see more tragedies next year - 
perhaps next week.

It is a brutal irony that our drug policy inadvertently makes already 
dangerous drugs even more dangerous. And cheap. And available. And 
the harder we push a prohibitionist approach, the harder our children fall.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom