THE WAR ON DRUGS

To the Editor:

The foreign press reports, on almost a daily basis, that U.S.-imposed drug
policy is becoming increasingly isolated, as leaders in Europe, Venezuela,
Brazil, Chile, Argentina, much of the Caribbean, and Canada begin to
renounce this policy catastrophe.

Yet we hear little of this from our nation's media.

The president of Mexico has stated, concerning legalization, that "Humanity
some day will see that it is best," and he has appointed high-level cabinet
officials who support his position, but it goes largely unreported by U.S.
news sources.

President Fox is not alone south of the border, by any means.

The Mexico City police commissioner, Alejandro Gertz Manero, called last
May for a "Holland-style drug policy" in Mexico. Mexico's secretary of
state, Jorge Castaneda, Colin Powell's counterpart, is a long-time backer
of drug legalization. Chief of Mexico's federal police, Miguel Angel de la
Torre, is now a drug legalization backer, as are Mexico's leading
human-rights leaders and journalists. Never saw it reported by the U.S. media.

The president of Uruguay, Jorge Batlle, became the first Latin American
head of state to call for legalizing drugs, in front of a large number of
U.S. correspondents last autumn at a Latin American presidents' summit in
Panama.

Again, in Mexico City, in front of a huge gathering of U.S. news reporters,
at the Dec. 1 inauguration of Mexican President Vicente Fox, Batlle spoke
this heresy and apparently no reporter besides a Spanish wire service had
the audacity to report it.

Where, might I ask, was the American press? They were there, but they
apparently left their professional credibility at home.

Canada? For all intents and purposes, we lost their support long ago, as
the sensibilities of a Dutch-modeled drug policy begin to encroach into
territory there, once reserved exclusively for drug war hysteria.

We can hardly buy support, anywhere in the world, for American drug policy,
and then, much of that is only hollow lip service, sold to the highest bidder.

What have they all seen, that somehow we've missed here in the land of the
free? Far too much of a policy that smacks of death and was doomed from its
very inception, I'm afraid, and we will realize, not soon enough, that we
also were had, hook, line and sinker.

Unfortunately, only after we've already wasted countless lives and futures,
incarcerated more people than any country in the free world, allowed
government agents to kill innocent people in their own homes by mistake,
employed Draconian mandatory minimum drug sentences, gone

to war on foreign soil, damned near destroyed our legacy as a free people,
and wasted a treasure trove of taxpayers' assets on what is nothing more
than a hysterical witch-hunt run amok. Why?

Just report it, our people will decide, and much like our ancestors during
alcohol prohibition, most Americans are bound to conclude that this
pork-barrel pariah called drug prohibition, has never, can never and will
never work.

The harm of drugs alone pale in comparison to those caused by the
prohibition of them and with each passing day, this becomes ever more
vivid, except to those who profit most handsomely from this historical
anomaly of political policy.

America's "War On Drugs" has evolved into a civil war waged on our own
people, pure and simple. The cure is worse than the disease.

The truth, always the first casualty of any war, can no longer be shielded
behind the children or censored by the U.S. news media, thanks to the
interconnectedness of our modern world and our First Amendment rights,
which also have barely survived the onslaught of the "War On Drugs."

Change is rapidly approaching. President Fox is right, "Humanity some day
will see that it is best."

Mike Plylar

Kremmling, Colo.