PROHIBITION LESSONS ARE RELEVANT TO DRUG WAR

Regarding your Feb. 27 article "Side effects hit Plan Colombia": Plan
Colombia will not protect Americans from drugs.

Fumigate the Colombian coca crop and production will shift to neighboring
Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Destroy every last plant in South America and
domestic methamphetamine production will boom to meet the demand for
cocaine-like drugs.

The self-professed champions of the free market in Congress are seemingly
incapable of applying basic economic principles to drug policy. Rather than
waste resources attempting to overcome immutable laws of supply and demand,
policymakers should look to the lessons learned from America's disastrous
experiment with alcohol prohibition.

With no controls for age, the thriving black market is very much
youth-oriented. The drug war's unintended consequences are routinely used
to justify its continuation by unscrupulous drug war profiteers and
opportunistic politicians.

Robert Sharpe, Washington Program Officer, The Lindesmith Center Drug
Policy Foundation