Pubdate: Sun, 22 Sep 2019 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2019 The New York Times Company Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Bill Williams CANDIDATES NEED TO ADDRESS DRUG WAR Having lost a son to heroin use, I want to ask the following of the candidates: Our "war on drugs," declared by President Nixon in 1971, is a dismal failure. The historian Alfred McCoy wrote recently in The Nation that "instead of reducing the traffic, the drug war has actually helped stimulate that ninefold increase in global opium production and a parallel surge in U.S. heroin users, from just 68,000 in 1970 to 886,000 in 2017." Drug deaths reached 192 a day in 2017, with many of them between the ages of 12 and 25. That is a silent Parkland =85 every day. What is your solution to this catastrophe? Bill Williams New York - --- MAP posted-by: Matt