TRY OTHER TOOLS TO FIGHT DRUG WAR

In your April 25 editorial, "Time to rethink anti-drug strategy," you
state, "While fighting drugs is the right thing to do, it should not come
at the expense of innocent lives." Missionary Roni Bowers and her infant
daughter, Charity, are not the first innocent victims in this war. Though
the U.S. media has largely ignored it, indigenous people throughout
drug-producing and -trafficking regions have been killed and displaced by
overt drug trade violence, and their food crops destroyed and children
sickened and killed by U.S.-sponsored aerial fumigation for decades now.

And these tragic stories are not limited to South America. Hardly a week
passes in which the papers don't carry a paragraph describing yet another
unarmed person shot dead by police on the street or in their own homes in
the small hours of the night.

After 30 years of it, we have no less addiction, no fewer overdoses and no
less substance abuse than we had to begin with. In fact, we have more of
all of those things. In addition, we have this whole raft of other problems
that have nothing to do with these prohibited substances and everything to
do with the black market that always accompanies prohibition. We're not
fighting drugs. We're fighting people; our own people.

When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Force of
law is a blunt force instrument, but it's not our only tool. Accurate,
frank and honest information and dialogue are far more effective tools for
dealing with a health problem. But we can't have that and prohibition, too.
People who experience trouble with substance abuse and addiction can't even
discuss it openly without confessing to a crime. No is just one word,
folks. Not enough information there.