The passage of Proposition 19 in California would have marked the beginning of the end of the drug war in the United States. Sadly, the ballot initiative failed, but even the fact of it making it to the ballot, not to mention garnering over 40 percent of the vote in a non-presidential election year is a success. Even if we have not the found the beginning of the end, we have started chipping away at the mentality that led us to this irrational and immoral place. [continues 668 words]
Dear Editor, Regarding Matt Hutchins' thoughtful Apr. 10th op-ed, there is a middle ground between drug prohibition and blanket legalization. Switzerland's heroin maintenance program has been shown to reduce disease, death and crime among chronic users. Providing addicts with standardized doses in a clinical setting eliminates many of the problems associated with heroin use. Addicts would not be sharing needles if not for zero tolerance laws that restrict access to clean syringes, nor would they be committing crimes if not for artificially inflated black market prices. Heroin maintenance pilot projects are underway in Canada, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. If expanded, prescription heroin maintenance would deprive organized crime of a core client base. This would render illegal heroin trafficking unprofitable and spare future generations addiction. [continues 187 words]
For almost forty years, America has been engaged in a war which has cost us trillions of dollars and ruined the lives of millions of our citizens. We have been fighting against drugs in a street war across the country. The definition enemy combatant has changed through the course of this conflict, first encompassing only the smugglers and distributors, then growing to include users, and now reaching beyond our borders to the farmers in the developing world who produce the source crops. Today we are told that all these parties are contributing to the forces of Terror, and that the whole chain of enemy forces is complicit in a conspiracy against us. If this were true, though, wouldn't we disarm our enemies by taking control of the economic forces that are the source of their power? [continues 964 words]
