Pubdate: Wed, 8 Oct 2003
Source: Harvard Crimson (MA Edu)
Copyright: 2003, The Harvard Crimson, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.thecrimson.harvard.edu/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/794
Author: Daniel J. Memel
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

EXPERT LINKS DRUG CRACKDOWN TO AIDS

The Bush administration's support for a crackdown on heroin production
in Afghanistan may spark a rise in AIDS throughout central Asia, a
drug policy expert told an Institute of Politics forum last night.

Sanho Tree, of the Institute for Policy Studies-a Washington-based
think-tank-warned that many addicts in countries surrounding
Afghanistan have become dependent on pure heroin, the only type which
can be smoked. But if U.S. anti-drug policies reduce the amount of
pure heroin available, addicts will be forced to use impure heroin,
which requires injection, Tree said.

"There is not a very large supply of clean needles in that area of the
world," Tree said.

According to Tree, the global drug trade "functions on Darwinian
principles," and the U.S.-led war on drugs has led to the survival of
the most effective traffickers and dealers.

"When we escalate the drug war, the people we tend to catch are the
people who are dumb enough to get caught-no offense to anyone who has
been busted," said Tree, eliciting laughter from the audience of
nearly 100 at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.

Tree, a former military historian, assailed the "war paradigm" that
dominates U.S. drug policy.

"Wars are about applying brute force to induce capitulation from
rational state-actors. We've been using this force against plants.
Plants are not rational actors," Tree said.

The panel discussion featured two other drug policy experts, each of
whom addressed a different topic.

Alan I. Leshner, the chief executive officer of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the
prestigious journal Science, said that prisoners should receive
mandatory, science-based drug treatment.

"Holding hands and singing kumbaya doesn't make science-based
treatment," Leshner said. "The truth is, coercion works."

Leshner bombarded audience members with data on drug treatment in a
12-minute slide show in which he illustrated that addicts benefited
from therapy whether or not they consented.

Lorraine D. Siggins, the chief psychiatrist at Yale University Health
Services, joined Tree and Leshner on the panel and spoke about the
remarkable recent increase in mental health cases at
universities.

"As mental health care has been less stigmatized, more students are
coming in and getting the sort of treatment that they would not have
sought 10 years ago," Siggins said.

"People with bipolar disorders are now being properly treated and are
marrying and having families," Siggins said. "But their children may
carry more vulnerabilities to a variety of mental illnesses. The
college age range, 17 to 24, is the time-nationally and
internationally-where major mental illness expresses itself."

As that generation of children reaches college age, university health
services are deluged with mental health cases.

The panel was held in memory of Norman E. Zinberg, a longtime
professor of psychiatry at Harvard.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin