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TIME FOR A NEW APPROACH ON DRUGS

The recent article, "Increase in Heroin use, Deaths" ( Daily Camera, May 19 ) is about the increased deaths from heroin overdoses due to bad heroin being sold on the streets.  This comes in the wake of the arrest of a suspected drug dealer.  Statistics show that the more we criminalize drugs, the more people die of overdoses from bad street drugs and the more homicides occur.  Obviously, the drug war is not working.  We should have learned that already with prohibition.

The United States has 2.2 million people in prisons and jails, a 500 percent increase in the last three decades.  There are more people incarcerated in the United States per capita than in any country in the world.  Forty-eight percent of those incarcerated are in for drug offenses.

Statistics have proven that legalizing drugs, for example heroin, and putting them into the hands of doctors, lessens crime, death from overdoses, and actual addiction.  Examples of places where this has been successful are Portugal, Switzerland, and the city of Vancouver.  By helping addicts get jobs and rehabilitating them into society, instead of ostracizing and criminalizing and making it hard for them to work, we could help solve this problem.  By putting them into the hands of prisons and private probation companies that take their money and make money off of crime, we are increasing the problem.  By putting drugs into the hands of criminals and addicts who desperately cut their drugs to sell them to support their habit, we are increasing the problem.

Let's learn from the successful policies of other countries.  In the long run and in addition, rehabilitating addicts and providing a system of compassion will also save us money.  The criminal justice system would save $12.9 billion if only 40 percent of people with drug offenses were rehabilitated instead of incarcerated.

Kika Dorsey

Boulder