Pubdate: Wed, 01 May 2013
Source: Columbus Dispatch (OH)
Copyright: 2013 The Columbus Dispatch
Contact:  http://www.dispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/93
Author: Joe Vardon

PORTMAN: FIGHTING DRUG ADDICTION NOT A 'WAR'

The United States has been fighting a "war on drugs" since the Nixon era.

Yesterday, Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman said the fight probably 
will never end in Ohio and now is the time to start calling it something else.

"A lot of people talk about the reference to end drug abuse as an 
armed conflict because it's a war on drugs," Portman said during his 
keynote speech at the 2013 Ohio Opiate Conference. "I think it's the 
wrong way to think of it. I think that in part because millions of 
our co-workers, our families and others suffer from addiction 
disorder, and it's not really a war, it's more a public-safety, 
public-health issue."

Last week the state released data showing that Ohio suffered a record 
1,765 drug-overdose deaths in 2011, the most recent data available. 
An Ohioan died every five hours from a drug overdose that year.

While applauding continued law-enforcement efforts to stem drug use - 
Portman was speaking specifically about prescription drug abuse - he 
said it's "very difficult to deal with this issue unless you are 
doing it in a holistic way."

"But if you can deal with it at the top end of the problem, before 
people get addicted, boy, the cost savings are incredible," Portman said.

Portman's speech seemed to align with recent rhetoric from others 
around the globe - particularly in Latin America - about moving away 
from war when discussing drug abuse.

"War implies winners and losers on all sides. Anti-drugs policy 
should ban this term," said Oscar Adolfo Naranjo Trujillo, Mexican 
director of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Ciudadania, during a 
World Economic Forum summit last week in Peru.

"When we add the concept of war, what happens is that the criminal 
knows his only option is death, and so the logic is, he has to kill 
or he will be killed." Naranjo Trujillo said.

Portman told the conference yesterday that one measure he 
co-sponsored in Congress to address the " demand" side of the drug 
problem was the ID MEDS Act, a bipartisan bill signed by President 
Barack Obama establishing national standards for states to share 
information from prescription-drug monitoring programs.

Portman also praised efforts in Ohio by Gov. John Kasich, Attorney 
General Mike DeWine and others to shut down "pill mills" and pursue 
expanded treatment for addiction.

"This issue cannot be solved, in my view," Portman said. "I don't 
mean to be pessimistic, but to say the reality is, it's kind of like 
with the ocean - the tide is going to keep coming in, and you have to 
keep fighting."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom