CRIME MADE PROFITABLE BY DRUG STANCE

The "Slash and Burn" article that you published in the June 6 issue of
the Los Gatos Weekly-Times was excellent. Think of all the problems that
could be avoided, the money saved and the tax dollars collected if
marijuana were legal.

Prohibition breeds organized crime, but, instead of taking the logical
path to eradicate organized crime, we continue to support the very
measures that make the crime profitable.

Steve Helms
Southlake, Texas

NOT ALL DRUGS SHOULD BE LUMPED TOGETHER

I wish Mary Ann Cook, in her Los Gatos Weekly-Times article titled
"Slash and Burn" June 6, an ecstatic hymn to CAMP, the marijuana
eradication program, had not indulged in fantasy. She wrote: "These
growers aren't users themselves. They are in it for the fortune to be
made." Apart from the fact that Cook cannot possibly know whether or not
the growers smoke marijuana, she evokes the image of the drug pusher
whose activities bring people to ruin.

Cook should consider the tens of millions of Americans who have used, or
who still use, marijuana without any negative impact on their lives
other than the constant threat of being sent to jail by the drug-war
fanatics. Nothing is gained by lumping marijuana with other, harder,
drugs. That is drug-war propaganda, pure and simple. The sooner we
scuttle this vicious and fascist war on drugs, the better.

Harry D. Fisher
Woodland Hills