Series on Addicts and AIDS

Even though Barry Bearak’s report on the lives of IV drug users in Brooklyn was extremely non-judgmental compared to most similar reportage in the major press, some readers will doubtless conclude that the degeneracy and squalor experienced by poor drug addicts justify an even harsher crackdown to eliminate the scourge of drugs from our society.

In fact, however, the suffering, disease, poor health and death that afflicts the denizens of Skid Row shooting galleries across the country are traceable to the policy of our government that proclaims heroin, cocaine and other addictive drugs illegal. Addicts must come up with $100 or more a day to pay to black marketeers for drugs that cost a few cents to manufacture, their addiction criminalizes them and forces them into an underground existence, sterile injection apparatus is outlawed and an ever more repressive police apparatus is always lurking nearby. Therefore, IV drug addicts can only dream of the normal life, hopeful future and the humane and supportive environment that are the norm for addicts of legal addictive drugs such as tobacco and alcohol.

Anyone who is appalled by the reality portrayed in the article should dedicate himself or herself to the decriminalization of all addictive drugs. Addiction should be recognized as the medical and behavioral issue that it is.

The practice of criminalizing drug use, in effect in the United States since 1914, has utterly failed to check the drug problem; at the same time, it has brought us rampant black markets, gang warfare, shoplifting, burglary, robbery, erosion of our civil rights, and a criminal justice system on the verge of collapse. Prohibition was the wrong answer in the case of alcohol; it is still the wrong answer.

FREDRICA SACKETT

San Diego