Date: Mon, 8 Jun 1998 11:09:45 -0400
From: belmonte@cns.nyu.edu (Matthew Belmonte)
Message-Id: <199806081509.LAA15245@cns.nyu.edu>
To: senator@dpm.senate.gov, senator_al@damato.senate.gov
Subject: oppose Coverdell amendment to the tobacco bill

The tobacco bill should be just that: a law that targets the harm being done by
tobacco marketing.  Unfortunately, factions on both sides of the senate have
been scrambling to pad the bill with amendments that advance their own agendas
and are utterly unrelated to the bill's original topic.  The latest and
most intrusive of these schemes is Senator Paul Coverdell's "Drug Free
Neighbourhoods Act", which targets many drugs other than tobacco.  Whether one
supports or opposes Coverdell's drug-war style, I should hope that any
reasonable person would agree candidly that arguing his points in the context
of the tobacco bill risks damaging that bill.

Even aside from this question of propriety, the so-called Drug Free
Neighbourhoods Act is a bad idea.  It would severely curtail the rights of the
accused.  It would expand government seizure of assets without due process.
It would ban federal funding for needle exchanges - this despite the fact that
the Secretary of Health and Human Services recently acknowledged the truth of
a host of controlled epidemiological studies that have proven that needle
exchange reduces the spread of HIV without increasing levels of drug abuse.

Coverdell's tactic is in bad faith, and it flies in the face of science and
reason.  I urge you to oppose his amendment and to pass the tobacco bill in
its original form.