Robert Sharpe: There is middle ground on drugs

Regarding the recent Los Angeles Times editorial advocating an end to the current approach in the "war on drugs" and reprinted in Sunday's Banner-Herald: 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. The success of the Swiss program has inspired heroin maintenance pilot projects in Canada, Germany, Spain, Denmark 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 from 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 organized crime controls marijuana distribution, consumers will continue to come into contact with addictive drugs like cocaine and heroin.

Marijuana prohibition creates a gateway to 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, see a British Medical Journal report on the Web at www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7150/13, and to learn more about Canada's heroin maintenance research, visit the Web at www.naomistudy.ca.

Robert Sharpe

• Robert Sharpe is a policy analyst with Washington, D.C.-based Common Sense for Drug Policy, a nonprofit organization working to expand discussion of drug policy.

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