Pubdate: Wed, 24 Nov 99 Source: Canberra Times (Australia) Copyright: 1999 Canberra Times Contact: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/ Author: William A Rhode, MD, Boston, USA I HOPE FOR SANITY ON DRUGS DOWN UNDER Your recent publications concerning drug-law reform, treatment diversion, and safe-injection houses have been followed closely by the US drug-treatment community. Your bottom line is starting to sound like ours. Drugs business is responsible for more income than any other form of tax-free import here it's larger than General Motors. The criminal-justice system has come to depend on incarceration and mandatory sentencing laws to justify their budgets. The drug-treatment 'industry' is an immense cottage industry outside of the medical establishment, dedicated to abstinence, which assures a never-ending stream of relapsing addicts to soak up dollars for treatment programs staffed by recovering addicts. Sound familiar? Addiction is a medical problem, a chronically relapsing illness, that sometimes goes into remission (about 4 per cent annually), just like any similar condition. Physicians are scared of addicts, because to treat them you still have to use addictive drugs to wean them away from the dependence, treat their underlying mental problems, or maintain those who don't go into remission spontaneously. Only when the public demands a medical ' cure' to addiction, just like AIDS or cancer, will there be effective means to stop this epidemic. In the meantime, the legal and legislative establishments are going to continue having a field day making money off the poor untreated addicts. Perhaps if you looked at Scotland or Switzerland, you would find much more effective solutions. In the US this appears impossible just too much money and too large an Establishment benefiting from the status quo. I hope Australia won't fall prey to the same dilemma. Eventually it will bankrupt all of you. Don't get fooled over the contretemps concerning one legal shooting gallery. That's just the death knell for the Establishment. At this distance, I am praying for more sanity from Australia. William A. Rohde, MD Boston, USA - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D