‘Symbiosis of Drugs and Crime’
Skolnick’s column emphasizes several important points but fails to go to the root of it all.
Most members of the medical profession see a need to go a step back to find the root of the problem, realizing that they are treading on sensitive feelings and strong prejudices.
The fact is that few, if any, hard-drug users can be found who did not begin with alcohol or tobacco or both. The other hard part of that fact is that both alcohol and tobacco are habit-forming drugs.
In other words, the vast majority of tobacco and/or alcohol users are already drug addicts. From then on, the transition from one addiction to another is, of course, relatively easy.
If the President and the Administration had been serious about wanting to stop the deadly drain on the nation’s finances and health caused by hard drugs, they could long ago have marshaled the country’s civilian resources to fight a war with vastly heavier casualties than all the wars in all our previous history. Congress has blindly fallen in line by continuing the tobacco subsidy. The result is that the tobacco and alcohol merchants have intensified their efforts to capture the young and ignorant, knowing that the casualty lists will not be printed.
Let’s try to empty the jails, and reduce the secret casualty lists by fighting the war where it begins.
FRANK W. NEWMAN, MD
Duarte
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