DRIVING UP THE PRICE OF DRUGS (AGAIN)

Re the June 26 article In Dade, Ashcroft touts river cocaine seizures: John
Ashcroft is not the first U.S. attorney general to brag about driving up
the price of illegal drugs in Miami.

In 1928 the then assistant U.S. attorney general, whose job was to enforce
Prohibition, bragged how she had blockaded Rum Row -- the Florida and New
Jersey coasts -- and caused the Miami price of a case of good liquor to
climb to $125 from $35. She was Mabel Walker Willebrandt, writing in her
1929 book The Inside of Prohibition. The title of Chapter 17 is ``Routing
Rum Row.''

Her blockade made bootleggers so desperate to meet demand that they
adulterated good liquor with wood alcohol and other solvents, thus
triggering an epidemic of blindings, paralysis and death from adulterated
liquor. This, in turn, eroded public support for Prohibition and
contributed to its demise four years later.

Interdicting any popular drug makes it more dangerous. The higher price
drives off casual users, who are no problem anyhow, and motivates abusers
to commit property crimes to get their fix at the higher price, even if it
means using a drug of unknown composition.

Ashcroft should tell us what is different about drug interdiction now that
will make it succeed when the last time it was tried, in 1928, it failed.

JOHN CHASE
Palm Harbor