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© St. Petersburg Times, published August 7, 2001
The St. Petersburg Times in its three-part series, U.S. versus them: Challenging America's War on Drugs (July 29-31) offered a skewed presentation of the facts to buttress the legitimacy of its "challenge." The reporter's message, despite the barrel of ink invested in it, can be reduced to the commonplace (but untrue) mantra: It's a war, the war has failed; and the war does more harm than the drugs.
But facts are stubborn things, so let me point out a few. The efforts to lower drug abuse combine prevention, education, treatment and law enforcement. That is not a war, therefore, but a responsible and balanced policy. Nor are the counterdrug efforts failing. What the articles did not report is that since 1980, drug use in the United States has gone down from 14 percent to 6 percent of the population (a more than 50 percent decline), that cocaine users have dropped from 5.7-million to 1.7-million (about 70 percent) and that 90 percent of our children do not use drugs. In Florida, marijuana use among teens has gone down 36 percent, cocaine use has gone down 66 percent, and inhalant use has gone down 19 percent since 1995.
Moreover, it is not the counterdrug policies that do the damage, but the drugs themselves. The lost lives, destroyed families, ruined health and social and economic degradation that drugs bring are tragic. The myth that our prisons are full of otherwise unoffending drug users is just that: a myth. Only 93 of the 70,000-plus inmates in Florida's prison system are there for marijuana possession, and each of them is a repeat offender with long rap sheets, which they plea bargained down.
What a pity that the Times approached the U.S. data with a jaundiced attitude while embracing Swiss and Dutch data without hesitation, data that many dispute. Joseph Califano, for example, a former Cabinet official and currently the Director of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University states that the policy of decriminalizing cannabis has wreaked havoc on Dutch society. He maintains that decriminalizing has led to increased drug use (especially among children), increased crime and the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS. Dr. Robert DuPont, author of The Selfish Brain, a classic study of addiction, states that legalization of drugs would greatly increase the drug using population in the United States. Indeed, while drug use in America has been going down, drug use (and the crime that goes with it) in both Holland and Switzerland has been going up.
Too bad the Times let its thesis get in front of its facts. But the fact remains that the American people reject illegal drug abuse (and drug experimentation) as a social norm. We have and can continue to lower drug abuse, but only with sound and balanced policy, not creative journalism.
-- James R. McDonough, director, Florida Office of Drug Control, Tallahassee
Re: Three-part series, U.S. versus them.
When did the St. Petersburg Times stop reporting the news and start publishing fiction?
As a drug prevention expert who has been involved in the field for nearly 20 years, I readily recognized that your portrayal of the drug problem is extremely skewed and lacking in facts.
One of your articles made the statement that "Most young people experiment with illegal substances." This is absolutely untrue. According to the 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, a well-respected national survey that has been conducted for several years, 72.4 percent of our youth aged 12 through 17 have never tried any illicit drug and 89.1 percent do not currently use drugs. Another well-respected survey -- the PRIDE survey -- released in July of this year indicates that 64.7 percent of youth in grades 9-12 did not use drugs in the past year, and this amount is an almost 4 percent increase of drug-free youth reported in their survey released in 1997. While these stats are certainly not as good as we'd like, they do not reflect that most young people have experimented with drugs. Neither do they indicate that we have lost the war on drugs.
You used a chart to depict the increase of drug use in the United States in an attempt to mislead the public about the successes we have made in drug prevention. It is statistically incorrect to use such a narrow window of time to make such a point. Your graph only included stats from 1991 through 1999, a period during which there has been a tremendous movement worldwide to legalize drugs and to promote permissive drug policies such as the ones you have promoted in your articles. A more accurate and effective manner in which to analyze the progress of drug prevention would be to look at the stats from the early 1970s to present. You will find that we have reduced drug use in the United States by more than 50 percent and, even though we have experienced an increase during this decade, it doesn't even approach the level that we experienced back in the '70s. I hardly consider this a failure.
It is also important to note that our greatest successes in reducing drug use occurred when we implemented policies that hold drug users and dealers accountable and have avoided the permissive drug policies that you have promoted in your articles.
To hold the Netherlands up as a success story is disgraceful. Here is what the Weekly Standard recently had to say about that nation's drug policy: "Amsterdam is the sex and drugs capital of Europe. Worldwide, Bangkok is its only rival. This once Calvinist metropolis, with its quaint canal-side architecture, has become druggies' Disneyland and playground of the sex-obsessed."
Does this sound like a success and is this what we would like to emulate here in the United States?
Your series also falsely portrays the "success" of the Swiss heroin projects. I have visited Switzerland and have been exposed to a "behind-the-scenes" visit at the heroin clinics. They are bizarre. I witnessed young people sticking needles filled with drugs in the veins of their necks, assisted by their government. Many were young people who did not appear to be of legal age. I saw no attempt to steer these poor souls into treatment. It is as though the Swiss government has decided that these addicts are not worth saving and so they have decided to escalate their death by ensuring that they receive a steady supply of drugs and every opportunity to use them.
Your series U.S. versus them is egregious and critically flawed. It did a terrible injustice to your readership.
-- Calvina L. Fay, executive director, Drug Free America Foundation, Inc., St. Petersburg
Re: U.S. versus them, July 29.
The Libertarian Party's principle-based position on the war on drugs has not changed in more than 30 years. Like most Americans, Libertarians demand to be safe at home and on the streets. Libertarians would like all Americans to be healthy and free of drug dependence. But drug laws don't help; they only make things worse.
The professional politicians scramble to make names for themselves as tough anti-drug warriors, while the experts agree that the war on drugs has been lost, and could never be won. The tragic victims of that war are your personal liberty and its companion, responsibility. It's time to consider the re-legalization of drugs.
Some Americans will always use alcohol, tobacco, marijuana or other drugs. Most are not addicts; they are social drinkers or occasional users. Legal drugs would be inexpensive, so even addicts could support their habits with honest work, rather than by crime. Organized crime would be deprived of its profits. The police could return to protecting us from real criminals, and there would be room enough in existing prisons for them.
It's time to re-legalize drugs and let people take responsibility for themselves. Criminal laws only drive the problem underground and put money in the pockets of the criminal class. With drugs legal, compassionate people could do more to educate and rehabilitate drug users who seek help. Individuals have the right to decide for themselves what to put in their bodies, so long as they take responsibility for their actions.
From the mayor of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke, to conservative writer and TV personality William F. Buckley Jr., leading Americans are now calling for repeal of America's repressive and ineffective drug laws. The Libertarian Party urges you to join in this effort to make our streets safer and our liberties more secure.
-- Daryl Henegar, Pinellas Park
Re: Drug treatment center opens doors Monday, July 28.
I can't tell you how proud I was to be a resident of St. Petersburg after reading the above article.
Non-violent drug addicts need help, encouragement and understanding instead of prison terms.
For too many years, we have watched our drug policies end in failure. Spending millions on drug interdiction and supporting the drug wars in Columbia have proved to be a waste of money. We need to appeal to the American people to stop using and buying illegal drugs. It is naive to believe we will ever achieve zero-tolerance for drugs when the people of this country are willing to support the drug market.
Is it time to think about legalizing drugs?
Thanks to Chief Goliath Davis, Rudy Bradley and the forward-looking people of St. Petersburg.
-- Judith Milliken, St. Petersburg
I salute the judgment and ruling handed down by Judge Elvin Martinez in Hillsborough County Court, citing the Tampa's Lap Dance Ordinance as "totally unconstitutional and far too broad" in its language and lacking enforcement due to its language.
I find it outrageous that the Hillsborough County Commission forces its moral agenda on the citizens of Hillsborough County by passing such moronic legislation.
With Tampa crime sky high, why should police officers be ordered to arrest and charge dancers and patrons of adult clubs for an activity that poses no threat of any kind to health or life? Look at the absurdity of spending valuable law enforcement, judicial and legal fees on such nonsense.
When will Hillsborough County wake up and realize that the real threat of porn and illegal content is not in the adult clubs of Tampa but on the Internet, which they have no control over.
-- Richard Unger, Sarasota
I testified against the 6-foot ordinance at the Tampa City Council meeting that adopted it. I argued that it could not be a bona fide public health ordinance because: (1) no evidence had been presented by any Florida-licensed public health professional (physician) that lap dancing was actually causing a public health problem (venereal disease); (2) no evidence had been presented that 6-foot ordinances, where adapted, had improved public health (lessened venereal disease); (3) no city of Tampa public health staff had testified at all.
Tampa staff did testify at the meeting. They said 6-foot ordinances, where adopted, had driven adult businesses out of business. I concluded that the real purpose of the 6-foot ordinance was to drive Dale Mabry and Drew Park adult businesses out of business. But why now, after all these years?
Because, now, the Bucs are winning, which makes Dale Mabry properties "prime opportunities" for politically connected Tampa businesses? Because, now, TIA wants to expand into Drew Park? Was the 6-foot ordinance really about land and not public health?
-- Early McMullen Sorenson, Dunedin
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