Pubdate: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 Source: Houston Chronicle (TX) Copyright: 1999 Houston Chronicle Contact: Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260 Fax: (713) 220-3575 Website: http://www.chron.com/ Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1288/a10.html and http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1261/a03.html and http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1298/a01.html Note: Drug Policy Forum of Texas members are making giant strides. Five PUB LTEs in one day! Our Newshawk, G. A. Robison, is Executive Director of DPFT and the subject of one of the "Related" items to which some of these letters refer. Author: John Wallace DRUG ADDICTS NEED TREATMENT, WE NEED WINNABLE WAR After reading the Chronicle's Dec. 1 editorial, "Ciudad Juarez a battlefield in a dangerous war," I wonder how the editorial writers could be so totally out of touch with reality. They claim that if drugs were legalized, the "bloodthirsty criminals who traffic in drugs would quickly find other avenues to prey on human vices and depravities." In other words, they seem to believe that the justification for the war on drugs is to keep drug traffickers confined to the drug-trafficking business so they won't have time to branch out into other, more nefarious activities -- whatever they might be. I also question the term "depravity" to describe -- for example -- a cancer patient or other critically ill person who uses illegal, smuggled marijuana to alleviate symptoms. When the United States abolished alcohol prohibition in 1933, our homicide rate dropped almost overnight by a factor of more than two and remained very low until the late 1960s when the current war on (some) drugs went into high gear. The number of drug users might rise slightly if drugs were legalized, but the social cost per addict would drop dramatically because most of the dangers associated with illegal drug use arise from the illegality, rather than from the biochemistry, per se. When was the last time anyone died from an overdose of moonshine contaminated with methanol? Probably not since 1933. When was the last time a Phillip-Morris and an R.J. Reynolds employee got into a shootout to decide who would supply cigarettes to a corner store? The blood of the murder victims in Juarez and of the thousands of other innocent people who die each year because of the war on drugs is on the hands of the hypocrites in the United States who persist in trying to criminalize and militarize a medical/social problem. John Wallace, Mico - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck