STOP LUNATIC DRUG POLICIES

After acknowledging that "what we're doing doesn't work" you insist on
continuing lunatic drug policies that have been failing for 86 straight years.

If the editorial mavens on the Idaho State Journal ever bother to do the
most basic research about drug prohibition you will quickly find that no
one was robbing, whoring and murdering over drugs when addicts could buy
all of the heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium and anything else they wanted
cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. When drugs were legal addicts
held regular employment, raised decent families and were indistinguishable
from their teetotaling neighbors. Overdoses were virtually unheard of when
addicts used cheap pure Bayer Heroin instead of the toxic potions
prohibition puts on the streets. (See: The Consumers Union Report on Licit
and Illicit Drugs http://www.
druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/cu/cumenu.htm)

Where drug crime was unheard-of we now have prisons overflowing with drug
users. Where addicts lived normal lives, we have hundreds of thousands of
shattered families. Where overdoses were extremely rare we have tens of
thousands of drug deaths every year.

The addiction rate is now five times greater than when we had no laws at
all and 17-year-olds are the fastest growing group of heroin users. These
are the consequences of the drug policies the Idaho State Journal endorses.

It is worth remembering that Eliot Ness and the revenuers never put the
booze barons out of business. Repeal and a regulated market for adult
alcohol use did that. Repeal and regulation will also take the crime out of
drug use.

Redford Givens,

San Francisco