REPEAL PROHIBITION AGAIN

The Feb. 4 Metropolitan article on the proliferation of home
methamphetamine laboratories ("New `meth' labs making hazardous home
`cooks'; Drug's popularity rising in outlying counties") reminded me how
"the more things change, the more they remain the same."

In my college days at Rice University, things were different. The
amphetamine that now gets people thrown in prison was legal then and
students used it to stay up and study for exams.

Users -- whether students or truck drivers -- could monitor how much they
were taking and if a few got hooked, as with alcohol, they were treated
with much less money than we now use to put them in prison. The rest of us
didn't worry about being arrested or having our lives ruined.

Longer ago, things were much the same. The "meth" labs of today are like
the stills used to make alcohol during Prohibition.

Amateurs turned out some very dangerous products in dangerous settings and
hundreds of thousands went blind, became paralyzed or died from bootleg
whiskey.

"Revenooers" shot citizens and citizens shot "revenooers." By the time the
country wised up and repealed Prohibition, the police were destroying 10
times as many stills as when they started and alcohol was still very much
available (especially to children) and more dangerous than ever.

We still have a significant, although smaller, alcohol problem. We just
don't have the chaos of alcohol drug lords or the tax expense and
corruption of the criminal justice system sacrificed on the failed effort
to control them.

I wonder when history will repeat itself and we'll all sober up long enough
to begin discussing how best to repeal Prohibition again.

Jerry Epstein, president, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Houston