Pubdate: Sun, 02 Aug 2015 Source: Orange County Register, The (CA) Copyright: 2015 The Orange County Register Contact: http://www.ocregister.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/321 Author: Stephen Downing Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v15/n421/a02.html FOLLOW PORTUGAL'S LEAD AND END THE WAR ON DRUGS Re: "Drug legalization: Learn from Portugal" [Opinion, July 26]: As a former drug warrior, I offer my support to the Register for their editorial on Portugal's drug laws. The American War on Drugs is slowly coming to a close, and we must take notes from those who have trekked this path before. Portugal decriminalized possession of small amounts of all drugs more than 10 years ago, prioritizing harm reduction and addiction treatment, and the positive results are nothing short of astounding. In America, we continue to wage this war under the presumption that drug users either deserve to die or deserve to be imprisoned, both of which show a stunning callousness to basic human rights and lack of generosity of spirit. A beloved child who becomes addicted to heroin and starts stealing from her parents to support her habit isn't necessarily a bad person, but a person in need of help. Yet the law assumes she deserve to be treated like a violent criminal or - because of our mandatory minimum laws - worse. I'm a retired deputy chief with the LAPD, and I've seen some horrific crimes. Yet the one that haunts me at night is the one perpetrated by our government every day - in which we criminalize a public health problem, punishing people for asking to get better. An end for the War on Drugs is long overdue. Stephen Downing Long Beach - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom