Drug Legalization

I found drug czar Barry McCaffrey’s diatribe against drug legalization encouraging (Commentary, July 27), mostly because the existence of a high-profile response like this means that the important issue of drug legalization in the U.S. is at last gaining some long-overdue credibility. The fact is that people use drugs. Millions of Americans are hooked on tobacco products and millions more are addicted to alcohol; these two extremely dangerous legal drugs kill over half a million Americans each year. Even so, no sane person advocates putting smokers and drinkers in prison for life as a way of “helping” them, yet this is exactly the approach recommended by McCaffrey for users of other, much less harmful drugs, which we presently term “illegal.”

MATTHEW CLARK

San Diego

*

* McCaffrey’s commentary is illogical and misses the main point.

Drug-related crime (i.e., robbery, murder, etc.) still accounts for two-thirds--by the government’s own estimates--of crime against persons. I have chosen not to join the minority who have put themselves in harm’s way by doing drugs, but I cannot choose not to be a victim of a crime perpetrated by someone looking for easy money to feed a drug addiction. This is the harm driven by the government’s draconian measures. Our freedoms are also being compromised by “stiff law enforcement.”

McCaffrey’s traditional approach is demonstrably a failure. We need to try something that “reduces harm” for the vast majority not involved in the world of drugs, but who are victimized by it daily through no fault of their own.

JAMES V. HALLORAN III

Redondo Beach

*

* In a time when respect for the law, especially as it concerns our drug laws, is in short supply in many quarters, our lawmakers must make a greater effort to bring our set of laws in line with reasonable public sentiment, and they must try to make our criminal codes internally consistent.

McCaffrey writes, “Addictive drugs were criminalized because they are harmful.” Is that really all there is to it? The children we are all so concerned about do not buy this kind of line. Many have seen friends die or be injured as a result of alcohol abuse; many more have lost loved ones to diseases that can be traced back to long-time cigarette use. Far fewer know of death or illness that has come as a result of marijuana use.

McCaffrey focuses on heroin use in most of his piece, but the most pressing drug legalization issue has to do with marijuana. It is much more widely used, and is felt by a great number of people in this country to be relatively harmless. As long as McCaffrey continues to call for the continued prosecution of marijuana offenses, but says nothing about criminalizing alcohol and cigarettes, I hope that he can offer the public some explanation as to the logic he is operating by.

ERIC H. GAMONAL

Woodland Hills