Changing tactics

Mexican raids on pharmacies should be part of new focus of drug strategies

February 10, 2005 Last weeks raid by Mexican officials at Mexican pharmacies could be an indication that officials are getting serious about solving the drug problem. At the very least, it is a necessary acknowledgement that the drug problem doesnt begin and end with banned drugs. The abuse of prescription drugs is a large part of the picture.

Hundreds of armed federal officers swept through Nuevo Progreso last Friday and searched several the pharmacies that line the its main street. Officials said they were cracking down on the illegal sale of prescription drugs.

Nuevo Progreso, south of Weslaco, is a small town where most of the economy consists of pharmacies, dentists and curio shops that cater to Winter Texans and other visitors. The spectacle of armed commandos sweeping through the drug stores probably was overkill, but we hope it wasnt merely a display that wont bring any follow-up. Efforts to curb drug use must address prescription and over-the-counter drug use, in the United States as well as in Mexico.

Our current drug war, and the propaganda that feeds it, makes little sense. It simply creates a floating demarcation between legal and illegal drugs or, in so many confusing presentations to schoolchildren, between drugs and medicine. That confusion is only exacerbated when these children watch television and see anti-drug public service announcements followed by advertisements promoting a new wonder drug thats supposed to make their lives better.

The drug war fails to deal with the fact that most illegal drugs were designed as legal medication that gave way to abuse and a demand that exceeded the legal supply. Opiates, amphetamines and so many other drugs were created for valid medical use, and still appear in many popular medications such as Tylenol 3.

Anti-drug measures also focus on interdiction, and pay too little attention to the physical and psychological factors that motivate people to use and abuse drugs in the first place. Many additions begin with legal painkillers that progress as people develop a dependency on the physiological changes that the drugs induce, whether they be relief from pain or euphoria.

Governments in Mexico, the United States and elsewhere must do more to educate the public about the effects of all drugs, and allow more attention to be placed on treatment. When people stop feeling a need for the benefits of drugs, both legal and illegal, then the demand for those drugs will diminish and the prevalence, and violence, of the black-market drug trade should diminish as well.

The Brownsville Herald