DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE WAR ON DRUGS

Re: "Don't surrender to drugs" (Editorial, Dec. 21):

First, I would agree that there is no problem that is more important to
solve in San Diego County than that of drug abuse and the related costs.
But does the solution lie in putting more money into the current system? No.

Currently, we have a highly dysfunctional, county-funded drug and alcohol
treatment system. It must be changed before spending more and more money.

Treatment providers need to be monitored for effective treatment outcomes
- -- not for simply filling beds. The county needs a nonprofit agency to test
the clients of the current providers of such services, at random,
post-treatment intervals, to verify and evaluate their efficiency. We need
to find out what kind of treatment is working best.

Spending more money on the present system will simply guarantee the
continuance of expensive automobiles and salaries for several executive
directors and the maintenance of a dysfunctional treatment system that will
guarantee to increase the population of homeless, jail and prison inmates
and judiciary, probation and parole cases.

We must look at our past mistakes. We must hire professionals to critically
evaluate and assess our problems, and look closely at the large numbers of
clients who do not complete the traditional, county-funded programs.

Most important, we must spend wisely on prevention. Prevention dollars must
be backed with critical and evaluative research -- not two or three
individuals' thoughts, aspirations and biases sewn into a proposal that is
bought by the county.

PATRICK KEITH Imperial Beach

Well, The San Diego Union-Tribune is at it again. If we just spend a little
more taxpayers' money, take away a tad more personal liberty or use our
leaders' bully pulpit, then we can lick drug use. Poppycock.

You proponents of the drug war need to realize that it is the very
illegality of drugs which makes this illicit industry so profitable and
thus, so dangerous. It is you well-intentioned social engineers who have
driven up the price of cocaine and marijuana and have turned what is
essentially a medical problem (addiction) into a criminal justice problem.
You created the Cali cartels, the Tijuana mob or whoever is in charge this
week.

Your actions have led to people prostituting themselves in order to get a
fix. And you inspire enough fear in people to forfeit their civil rights in
order to wage a war you cannot win. If you truly want to rid this country
of the negative effects of drug use, you will stop the criminalization of
drugs and reconcentrate resources on personal responsibility and medical
approaches to lifestyle choices. To carry on with this insane war on drugs
shows that you are just as high as the addicts.

MATTHEW S. McDONALD San Diego

I have a hard time understanding how the facts presented in your editorial
support a continued press of the "war" against drugs instead of an end to
the war. The dollar amounts indicated ($759 million) for law enforcement,
courts, jails, prisons and property destruction for county taxpayers,
producing virtually nil results in drug use, actually support the argument
to end prohibition and spend these funds on drug and alcohol treatment and
rehabilitation.

Prohibition did not work for alcohol, a substance of large weight and
volume -- and it certainly is not working for the other substances which
are much easier to contraband throughout society. Why do we draw the
distinction between these different substances when the harms done by drug
prohibition in terms of violence, prison time, forfeiture laws, trampling
of Fourth Amendment rights and illicit funds seem to far outweigh the harms
caused by the substances themselves. And even if one argues that drug use
is bad (I do), under our Constitution, where does the government get the
right to control what individuals do to their own bodies so long as they
don't get behind the wheel of a car and injure others?

In the early 1900s, it took a Constitutional amendment to institute
prohibition of alcohol, yet we have acquiesced to allowing this existing
drug prohibition and its harmful results to happen without a whimper. Treat
drugs as the medical issue they are (as we did for the first 200 years of
this nation), and most of the so-called drug-related "problems" will
vanish. Not to mention putting all the drug lords out of business -- just
as happened to the bootleggers when alcohol prohibition ended.

DAVID C. BREZIC San Diego