DRUG WAR CASUALTIES

While we've got your attention ... if only for a few moments.

In the wake of Peru's killing of a Baptist missionary and her
7-month-old baby, God-fearing Americans may be willing to think
critically about the drug war. Every day we hear of more people being
killed in drug war-related violence. About once a week an innocent
person is killed by earnest law enforcers. As we mourn these people
who were sacrificed to the drug war while doing God's work, we might
reflect upon the notion that medicine has become the established
religion of the United States. Legal drugs have become our gods;
illegal drugs are the devil.

The doctors are priests and dope dealers are demons.

Prayer is banned in schools, replaced by law enforcement officers
preaching medical doctrine.

Perhaps we are being punished, as we were by 1920s Prohibition, for
believing man's law can impose those moral values which must come from
within. When we put our trust in an arm of flesh, we forsake the
Living God.

BOB RAMSEY, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Irving