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One-Way Street. It may also change the nature and techniques of drug control. The President has asked Congress to permit the U.S. Government to use information provided by foreign police to prosecute international narcotics dealers, so long as that information is obtained in compliance with the laws of that country. Nixon has requested $2,000,000 for research and development of equipment and techniques for the detection of illegal drug traffic; $2,000,000 for research and development of herbicides to destroy narcotics-producing plants "without adverse ecological effects"; and an additional $26.6 million for the Treasury Department, primarily to intensify customs controls.
One source of the problem, as Nixon recognizes, lies in the countries where opium is grown and processed into heroin, and he is stepping up efforts to win their cooperation. He is also requesting $10 million for improved education and training in the field of drugs at home. "We need an expanded effort to show that addiction is all too often a one-way street," he told Congress. "It is essential that the American people are alerted to this danger, to recognize that it is not a danger that will pass with the end of the war in Viet Nam, because the problem existed before we were in Viet Nam."
Ominous Specter. Despite the President's disclaimer, the problem has been greatly accelerated by the war. Officially, the estimates are that between 26,000 and 39,000 G.I.s use hard drugs. New York Congressman Seymour Halpern, just back from Viet Nam, puts that figure as high as 60,000, most of them on heroin. There are an estimated 250,000 addicts in the U.S. Some authorities believe that if 75% of them supported their habit by committing crimes the cost to the country would exceed $8 billion yearly. With the return of the addicted veterans, the cost of heroin in dollars, in violence and more subtly in broken lives and suffering, becomes even harder to reckon. Just last week in Detroit, seven addicts were massacred in a gangland-style war for control of the city's $350 million heroin trade. The dead, all shot in a drug dealer's apartment, bring to 50 the number of heroin-related murders in the city this year. The specter of highly weapons-trained, addicted combat veterans joining the deadly struggle for drugs is ominous. Warned Iowa Senator Harold Hughes, speaking in Detroit over the weekend: "Within a matter of months in our large cities, the Capone era of the '20s may look like a Sunday school picnic by comparison."