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I have worked for over 30 years as an emergency medicine physician. We have measured that between 60 percent and 80 percent of our patients who lack insurance are there due to addiction. Coding systems categorize by final diagnosis, e.g. "forearm laceration," but when the record is closely examined, it turns out that the laceration occurred because the patient broke a window during a burglary to get money for drugs.

I ask addicts three questions. What is the daily price tag of your addiction? Answer: $20 to $100 per day. What do you do to get the money? Answer: sell drugs, steal, prostitution, work if available. Would you go into a drug treatment program now? Answer: Yes, but none is immediately available.

Quick and conservative estimate: $50 per day times 60,000 addicts in the greater Baltimore metro area times 365 days per year equals $1.1 billion. Add to that the D.C./Montgomery/Prince George's County areas and the rest of the state, and it's easy to see that addiction [is] a major factor in crime and rising health care costs.

Analyzed from an economic view, the drug business is amazing. Product (poppy, coca) is grown, refined, processed, and shipped into every city in the U.S. A vast distribution network ensures that product is readily available down to the street corner level. Financial systems turn the cash of the "dime bag" into multi-billion dollar operations, complete with money laundering, banking, and investment, not to mention the expensive — and brutal — security enforcement required by an illegal industry.

When constituents ask me about their rising health insurance premiums or fear of crime, I respond that addiction is at the source. But after 40-plus years of the war on drugs, our society is no better off and probably worse. Jammed prisons, AIDS, destroyed families, crime victims, terrorist funding: the toll is immense. Addiction treatment is a critical step, but just a beginning. Isn't it time our society had a full, open, honest, and intense discussion about drugs? Shouldn't we admit that the War on Drugs has failed and that other policies deserve exploration? Prohibition didn't cure alcoholism in the 1920s; it only fueled organized crime. Like that well-intentioned but failed experiment, is it now time to end drug prohibition? Is it time to consider a system of regulation, taxation, treatment, and real control?

Dan Morhaim, Owings Mills

The writer, a Democrat, is a state delegate representing the 11th District in northwest Baltimore County and the deputy majority leader of the House of Delegates.