OUR DEMAND FOR DRUGS

To the Editor:

"Officials Long Debated Risks of Anti-Drug Patrol in Peru" (front page, May
22) calls the entire notion of source-country interdiction into serious
question. According to the government's own statistics, the entire yearly
demand for heroin in the United States can be met by less than 25 square
miles of opium-poppy fields; 250 square miles, about one-fifth the size of
Rhode Island, is enough to meet our yearly cocaine demand.

With drug crops spread throughout the overgrown jungles of entire
continents, interdiction will never make a serious dent in the drug trade.
So why are we wasting billions of our tax dollars, risking American lives
and supporting brutal dictatorships with this utterly
useless policy?

KEITH SANDERS
Oakland, Calif.