Pubdate: Sat, 12 Feb 2000
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2000 David Syme & Co Ltd
Contact: letters@theage.fairfax.com.au
Address: 250 Spencer Street, Melbourne, 3000, Australia
Website: http://www.theage.com.au/
Author: Michael A. Hadden
Dutch heroin statistics need to be taken more seriously.
The Dutch Government claims that young people have virtually stopped
using heroin. Only one in 333 secondary students in Amsterdam have
tried heroin, while almost one in 20 have tried it in Australia. And
a major drug treatment program has recently closed in Amsterdam
because of falling demand.
Dutch drugs policy tries to convert cannabis from the main risk factor
for heroin use to a major protective factor against heroin use. Doing
so also facilitates a return to cannabis use by heroin users.
Treating their policy and practice as trivial or coincidental is
contemptuous of the mortality, morbidity and crime that epidemic
heroin use causes. Dutch heroin statistics suggest that what we do is
push young cannabis users towards heroin and injecting.
Ignoring the only modern policy to work against today's dirt-cheap
heroin facilitates death, disease and crime.
MICHAEL A. HADDEN,
McDowall, Qld.
