Pubdate: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 Source: Amarillo Globe-News (TX) Copyright: 2000 Amarillo Globe-News Contact: P.O. Box 2091, Amarillo, TX 79166 Fax: (806) 373-0810 Website: http://amarillonet.com/ Forum: http://208.138.68.214:90/eshare/server?action4 Author: John Kanelis DRUG LEGALIZATION ISN'T COST-FREE Remember the television commercial that showed an egg frying in a pan, with the announcer's grim narration, "This is your brain on drugs"? It didn't take a public service announcement to convince me that doing drugs is a profoundly bad lifestyle choice. That said, I continue to be amazed at those who suggest that drug legalization somehow would produce less of a drain on society than the current war on drugs. These folks blow my mind - so to speak. The drug legalization argument breaks down quickly, in my mind, when proponents suggest that it wouldn't cost the government any more to treat the issue as a "medical problem" rather than a "law-enforcement problem." Does easier access to legal drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, create more drug addicts? How can it not produce such an outcome? "There can be no doubt that it would increase addiction," said Ron Owens, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Amarillo. Owens is a psychologist who has treated "lots of drug abusers" in his day. "Legalization would be catastrophic," he said. "It would create a drug industry that I believe would dwarf the pharmaceutical industry we have today." Owens believes companies would begin "research into determining how to make the drugs that give the user the best buzz for the buck." Does legalization cost less than the current system of incarcerating drug offenders? I suppose it would - if you didn't spend a nickel caring for someone who fried his or her brain like the egg in that commercial. Who, though, is going to allow our civilized society to let someone abuse heroin or some other hard drug without offering some help in return? Who among us would condone letting people sleep literally in the street, or in our public parks? Or who would allow the run-of-the-mill addict to stumble aimlessly along our streets, panhandling passers-by for a little drug money so they can purchase their next fix at some community clinic? The cost is there. And it is huge. It would cost us all to pay for publicly supported drug counseling and rehabilitation. It also would cost us all to support those who, for whatever reason, cannot shake themselves of the drug habit. Those who cannot sustain themselves must rely on others - such as you and me. "If you had psychoactive becoming legal," said Owens, "you'd have so many more drugs coming on that you couldn't keep up" with trying to find treatments. "It would be a huge drain on the economy to try." OK, so we don't spend tons of cash on jails under a drug-legalization scenario. The government, though, is hardly going to be swimming in cash because it isn't paying police officers to arrest drug dealers down on the corner. Society is going to "reinvest" those savings in the myriad drug-treatment programs spawned by a system that makes every drug under the sun available through legal means. "Start with health care," said Owens, "and the cost of treating overdoses and counteracting the other effects of drug abuse. Then you have to deal with lost productivity, and then you have to deal with the consequences of behavior, such as car crashes. "And then you have to deal with what happens to the children" born to women who would abuse legal drugs, said Owens. Is the current "war on drugs" working? Not by a long shot. The government is arresting plenty of drug dealers - and users - only to find plenty more where they came from. Educators and parents clearly need to do more to imbue in our young people that drug use is an inherently dangerous endeavor. Indeed, one cannot have too much awareness of those dangers. The antidote to the current system, however, is not legalization. It is time for the drug-legalization crowd to stop implying that such an endeavor is cost-free. As Ron Owens said, "We could lose a generation." John Kanelis is editorial page editor for the Amarillo Globe-News. He can be contacted at the Globe-News, P.O. Box 2091, Amarillo, Texas 79166, or via e-mail at --- MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager