'LEGALIZATION' SEEMS TO BE THE RIGHT WAY TO GO IN DRUG WAR

The Review's editorial, "Meth Fight Must Go To The Source In Mexico"
(Nov. 29) is appreciated. However there are ways of dealing with the
meth problem that too often go unmentioned.

While you rightly point out the decrease in domestic "mom and pop"
meth labs as laudable the point about production shifting and moving
to Mexico was incomplete. In drug policy reform circles that shift in
production is known as the balloon theory. If you take an inflated
balloon and squeeze it it bulges. Push that bulge down and another
pops up somewhere else.

The drug war is but a new-fangled version of Prohibition and just as
with alcohol Prohibition, is a policy that can never succeed. One of
the greatest deterrents to drug abuse (which is a separate from drug
use) is education. Prison is not an effective deterrent nor an
effective rehabilitation model. At least not without totally
restructuring our prison system.

What Oregon needs is more money for education. To have prison
construction and funding now exceeding education spending is ludicrous
and counter productive.

If we wish to end the cartels' stranglehold on the production and
distribution of illegal drugs we must end Prohibition II and
re-legalize all drugs and return addiction as a disorder to be treated
by the medical profession.

While the prohibitionists always screech at the word "legalization"
they do so only to deflect attention away from the obvious failure of
our War On Drugs (aka Prohibition II).

Allan Erickson

Drug Policy Forum of Oregon

Eugene