Readers Respond: War on Drugs (Part 1)
From Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs News:
Join Together received an unprecedented number of passionate, thoughtful responses to "Mission Accomplished" in War on Drugs?
Here in Baltimore, our new Health Commissioner, Joshua Sharfstein, began his term by reviewing 15 years of public health statistics related to our investment in substance abuse treatment.
Speaking at a conference sponsored by Baltimore City and Open Society Institute in June, Dr. Sharfstein cited significant decreases in new HIV infections, drug-related deaths, violent crime and other public health measures correlated with our tripling of treatment capacity.
We endorse former Drug Czar Dogoloff's view of the importance of making treatment available to all who seek it.
"As far as I am concerned the war has not even started" I would like to know why my daughter Meggin is in a box on a counter in our trailer if we have already won the war on drugs.
She was living in Maryland at the time of her death, and it seems that there was no problem for her to get heroin whenever she wanted to.
Alcohol kills more people in the U.S. than all the other drugs combined, save cigarettes, and more than 17, 000 people lose their lives on the nation's highways due to DUI.
According to the DEA, by 1965 there were 4 million people in the U.S. who had used an illegal drug but by 2001 there were 110 million-27 times as many.
By 1999 street level heroin averaged 38.2 percent pure (25 times as potent) and cost $0.80 to get high (adjusted by DEA to 1980 dollars to account for inflation).
Join Together welcomes reader letters for publication consideration.
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