Chemical abuse is a health problem not a crime

By Charles Reese

HERE are the facts on estimates of illegal drug use as contained in the
Statistical Abstract of the United States. Look and see if you think a $40
billion "war" is justified.

These numbers are based on a household survey. Current usage is defined as
having used the drug at least once within the month prior to the survey. It
is broken down by age groups.

Age 12 17: 7.3 percent report using marijuana; 0.4 percent, cocaine; 2
percent, inhalants; 1.2 percent, hallucinogens. Reported heroin use was too
small to measure.

Age 1825: 12.1 percent, marijuana; 1 percent, cocaine; 0.9 percent,
inhalants; 1.5 percent, hallucinogens; and 0.1 I percent, heroin. 1 Age 25
and over: 3 percent, marijuana; 0.6 percent, cocaine; .5 percent,
inhalants; and heroin use too small to measure.

Frankly, that doesn't look like a drug epidemic to me. Reported heroin
usage was too small to measure in two out of the three age groups, and
after age 25, drug usage dropped. Drugrelated deaths in 1993 totaled
13,275. By way of comparison, 90,523 people died in 1993 from accidents.
Accidental falls that year killed 13,141 people, a hair short of the number
who died from drug related causes. Perhaps the federal government should
wage war on scaffolding, step ladders and the law of gravity. The same year
that 13,275 people died from drugs, 743,000 died from heart disease;
529,000 from cancer; 150,000 from strokes; 101,000 from pulmonary diseases;
82,000 from pneumonia; and 53,000 from diabetes. In other words, we can
hardly justify the drug war hysteria on the basis of the lethal effects of
illegal drugs. Any crimes committed are not a result of the drugs but a
result of the government prohibition. Drug prohibition, like liquor
prohibition, makes its profitable for criminal organizations to supply them
and leaves addicts with no source of supply but criminals.

It is the prohibition which generates the crime, not only the crimes
committed as rival gangs compete for market turf, but also the corruption
of law enforcement, prosecutors and fudges.

None of this stuff is good for you, but a lot of legal products aren't good
for us either. The difference between legal and illegal is just a political
decision. What we have done is take a health problem and criminalize it.

We could destroy every drug gang in the world overnight by legalizing
drugs. I don't mean make them commercially available, but let people who
need them register at the public health departments and draw them for free.
Cocaine, marijuana and heroin are dirt cheap to produce. It wouldn't cost
one*hundredth the amount of money to supply addicts as it does to try to
prevent them from buying drugs.

This prohibition, like the previous one, is costing taxpayers billions of
dollars, creating criminal empires, spreading corruption among public
officials, ruining the lives of people who wouldn't normally be criminals,
costing the lives of honest lawmen, and in return, gaining us what?

Headlines? Juicy stories? An excuse for bigger law enforcement budgets and
more prisons? An opportunity for politicians who are screwing up the
country in other ways to puff out their chests and pretend to be foursquare
for law and order?

Exactly how long does an attempt to solve a problem have to fail before we
try another way? Chemical abuse is a health problem, not a crime. It should
be treated with education and treatment, not by kicking down people's doors
and dragging them off to prison and putting their families on the welfare
roles.

Somehow, we have to relearn to use reason in our discussion of public
issues instead of demagoguery.

Charley Reese is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.
Email: OSOreese@aol.com