CURRENT DRUG POLICY IS A 'GATEWAY POLICY'

This letter is in response to the excellent April 25 editorial, "Crashing
In Peru," which said that the deaths of two innocent 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. How
many innocent Peruvians have been sacrificed at the altar of America's drug
war? As Peruvian coca production has gone down, Colombian coca production
and domestic methamphetamine production have both gone up, along with the
incarceration rate in the United States, now the highest in the world.

When will the champions of the free market in 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.

Marijuana currently provides the black market contacts who introduce users
to drugs like cocaine. 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 might send the wrong message to children. But I would
like to think that children are more important than the message.
Opportunistic "tough on drugs" politicians would no doubt disagree.

Robert Sharpe, Program officer, The Lindesmith Center Drug Policy
Foundation, Washington, D.C.