Drug abuse control: policy turns toward rehabilitation

Heroin addiction is the most difficult to control and the most socially destructive form of addiction in America today. Heroin is a fact of life and a cause of death among an increasing number of citizens in America, and it is heroin addiction that must command priority in the struggle against drugs.-President Nixon in his drug message to Congress on 17 June.     

Drug policy: striking the right balance

Drug policy should strike the right balance between reducing the harm done by psychoactive drugs and reducing the harm that results from strict legal prohibitions and their enforcement. It is concluded, from a cost-benefit analysis based on pharmacologic, toxicologic, sociologic, and historical facts, that radical steps to repeal the prohibitions on presently illicit drugs would be likely, on balance, to make matters worse rather than better. Specific recommendations are offered for ameliorating the dangers to users and to society that are posed by each addictive drug.