WAR ON DRUGS WAS LOST A LONG TIME AGO

The points in a Jan. 19 letter are irrefutable as the writer concludes
"Regulating and taxing drugs, not the counterproductive drug war is
best for our safety, economy and budget."

Please also note that Taliban-backed heroin supply chains enabled by
our war on drugs as well as those for cocaine from our bellicose,
socialist-leaning neighbors in South America, are our major and most
incalculable security threats.

Prohibition enables these clandestine supply chains that, once in
place, are available to our mortal enemies for use to infiltrate
myriad weapons of mass destruction: anthrax, uranium, plutonium and
key trained individuals.

We shoot ourselves in the head with this stupid war on drugs that
conquers only our weakest citizenry with prison instead of education
and treatment through this huge proven waste of precious tax revenue.

Given the data to date in the war on drugs, it was lost last
century.

Yet it's entrenched bureaucracy perpetuates its insanity at the
exponentially increasing risk of better enabling our true enemies to
hasten our own demise.

We should attack to defeat our enemies in waging our wars instead of
ourselves.

Nick LaPrade

Pleasanton