Dear Editor,
Regarding your March 3rd editorial captioned “The US drug report and the crime crisis” the U.S. drug war is a cure worse than the disease.
Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug trafficking. For addictive drugs like methamphetamine, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn’t fight crime, it fuels crime.
There is a middle ground between drug prohibition and legalization.
Switzerland’s heroin maintenance programme 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. 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. Marijuana should be taxed and regulated like alcohol, only without the ubiquitous advertising. Separating the hard and soft drug markets is critical.
As long as marijuana distribution is controlled by organized crime, consumers of the most popular illicit drug will continue to come into contact with sellers of hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. Given that marijuana is arguably safer than legal alcohol, it makes no sense to waste scarce resources on failed policies that finance organized crime and facilitate hard drug use. Drug policy reform may send the wrong message to children, but I like to think the children are more important than the message.
For information on the efficacy of heroin maintenance please read the following British Medical Journal report: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/327/7410/310
To learn more about Canada’s heroin maintenance research please visit: http://www. naomistudy.ca/
Yours faithfully,
Robert Sharpe MPA
Policy Analyst
Common Sense for Drug Policy
Washington DC USA
