Gene Tinelli and Nicholas Eyle are anything but wild-eyed radicals. They are serious, thoughtful men who care deeply about their community and about society.

They surely do not advocate drug abuse. They have seen up close the damage it can do.

Still, the two men have been blackballed from membership on the Syracuse-Onondaga Drug and Alcohol Abuse Commission. The reasons seem to have more to do with politics than policy - promoting rigid unanimity of opinion and not honest inquiry.

Tinelli is a medical doctor. The former naval officer is staff psychiatrist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center's chemical dependency clinic in Syracuse. Surely that kind of expertise could be useful on the city-county drug panel. But Tinelli's resume apparently is less important that his beliefs - at least to those who approve appointments to the commission.

Tinelli and Eyle are active in ReconsiDer, a citizens' drug policy organization with some 400 members. ReconsiDer has declared the War on Drugs a failure - a widely held notion among people of diverse political views. The group advocates that certain classes of illegal drugs should be decriminalized. The drugs themselves do less harm than government efforts to combat their use, ReconsiDer argues.

Tinelli's and Eyle's appointment to the drug panel was all but approved last month until Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney John Duncan intervened. He told Onondaga County Legislature Chairman William Sanford about ReconsiDer's views, which Duncan said should disqualify it from being represented on the commission. Sanford then pulled the nominations from a vote by the full legislature.

Legislator Bill Kinne, who submitted both names to his colleagues, said the action against Tinelli and Eyle "absolutely stifles the democratic process. ... These people aren't criminals. ... In fact, from what I understand, Duncan and Tinelli share the same goals. They merely have different approaches."

Eyle pointed out that the federal government recognizes ReconsiDer as "a nonprofit educational institution." That makes Duncan's objections all the more bothersome. Does he really think two members are going to sway a 45-member commission? If so, perhaps it needs to be swayed.

Tinelli and Eyle have been blocked from the drug abuse commission not because they repudiate its goal. They share that goal, but they are locked out because they do not march in lockstep with prevailing opinion on how to accomplish it.

If ever an effort needed new insights, new perspectives, it's the War on Drugs. We've been fighting it for a generation or more, but all we've managed is a standoff, at best.

We've tried stiffer mandatory prison sentences and we've wound up with exponential growth in the prison population but negligible gains against drug abuse. We've tried military intervention and cooperation with drug-exporting countries, only to create a pervasive culture of corruption, payoffs and murder.

Study after study concludes that prevention and treatment programs are more effective - and less expensive - than long prison sentences for offenders. Yet those programs go wanting while we build more prisons.

This is not to say Tinelli and Eyle have only the right answer. But neither do the other members of the panel. If the commission is stacked with people of a certain mindset - if diverse views are not allowed to be expressed and debated - no new ideas can penetrate the barrier of moral certitude. Thus, nothing new can be learned.

Tuesday, June 6, 2000

Drug panel nominees supported Knowledge, interest argue for appointment To the Editor: Apparently the Syracuse-Onondaga Drug and Alcohol Abuse Commission is misnamed and should be more accurately called the Syracuse-Onondaga War on Drugs Commission. I say this on the basis of Sunday's story about the nomination of Nicholas Eyle and Dr. Eugene Tinelli to membership on the commission. Knowledge of and demonstrated interest in the problems of substance abuse should logically be the grounds for membership. Eyle and Tinelli obviously have such knowledge and interest. The "drug warrior" approach clearly has failed and continues to fail. But if that vain effort is what the commission really is about, be honest and make that clear in the commission's name and statement of goals. Of course, if Onondaga County Legislator Thomas Smith, R-Clay, is correct in his statement that the county "is a community of traditional values," then there is no need for the commission at all - adherents of traditional values neither use drugs the commission is concerned about nor abuse alcohol. But if those drugs and alcohol are problems, then the commission needs members who consider harm-reduction steps other than the failed and failing "War on Drugs." John D. Mitchell Liverpool If you do what you did, you just get what you got To the Editor: In the war against drug and alcohol abuse, clearly there needs to be a new approach at the "front." The disappointment of Dr. Eugene Tinelli and Nicholas Eyle as servants on your commission chronicles the shortsighted, unyielding posture that prevails and supports the ineffectiveness of your drug abuse-commission and, I dare say, all the other commissions of the like, in the neverending war against drug abuse in America. As president of a newly formed New York State 501(C)3 organization, I advocate for the complete abolition of drugs and yes, alcohol, because of its destructive, non-productive and life debilitating effects. I do not, however, turn a deaf ear or blind eye to any point of view on the subject, regardless of its mainstream popularity. The collective approach to the problem is not working. Perhaps Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney John Duncan and his supporters would like to know: If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got. So the problem continues to grow, the approach to the problem continues to be the same, thus the solution is needlessly out of sight. My staff and I support the appointment of Tinelli and Eyle to the commission in hopes that the commission begins to look beyond the narrow vision that presently prevails. Thomasetta Harper, president Motivational Movement Inc. New York City Tinelli, Eyle are just what commission needs To the Editor: I was astounded to learn that two highly qualified candidates for the Syracuse-Onondaga Drug and Alcohol Abuse Commission have been blackballed by a federal prosecutor because they do not subscribe to his "correct line" on drug prohibition. Someone should remind the fed that alcohol was also once prohibited like some other intoxicants currently are. Why was alcohol relegalized? Because alcohol prohibition corrupted the police, filled the prisons, handed control of booze to organized crime, distributed impure product that poisoned thousands, and drove up illegal profits that guaranteed this dangerous drug would be available to any kid who wanted it. Dr. Tinelli and Nick Eyle, as members of ReconsiDer, a citizens group that simply points out the damage to our society the present failed drug policies are inflicting, are just the folks the commission needs. Hard-line ideologues like prosecutor Duncan oppose them because they speak directly to the complete disaster of their "Drug War." Robert Steffes Crescent, Pa. Tuesday, June 6, 2000