DEATHS IN PERU ARE 'A WAKE-UP CALL': AMERICA MUST END ITS ANTI-DRUG 'WAR'

Regarding your ... May l editorial: The deaths of two ... members of an
American missionary family in Peru should serve as a wake-up call.
Autocratic former president Alberto Fujimori practiced a scorched earth
campaign against Peru's Shining Path guerrilla movement, a movement
financed by black market coca profits.

Allegations of corruption, rampant human rights violations and civilian
deaths are remarkably similar to the current situation in Colombia. As
Peruvian coca production has gone down, Colombian coca production and
domestic methamphetamine production have both gone up, along with the U.S.
incarceration rate, now the highest in the world.

When will the champions of the free market in the U.S. Congress acknowledge
that immutable laws of supply and demand render the drug war a costly
exercise in futility? This is not to say that all drugs should be
legalized. Taxing and regulating marijuana would effectively undermine the
black market. ... Current drug policy is a gateway policy. Separating the
hard and soft drug markets and establishing strict age controls is
critical. Right now kids have an easier time buying pot than beer. Drug
policy reform may send the wrong message to children, but ... children are
more important than the message. Opportunistic "tough on drugs" politicians
would no doubt disagree.

Robert Sharpe

Drug Policy Foundation

Washington, D.C.