SENSELESS PRACTICE

Regarding Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson's call for President Clinton
to grant clemency to hundreds of nonviolent drug offenders, keeping such
offenders behind bars is a senseless waste of tax dollars.

The land of the free recently earned the dubious distinction of having the
highest incarceration rate in the world, with drug offenses accounting for
the majority of federal incarcerations. This is big government at its
worst. At an average cost of $25,071 per inmate annually, maintaining the
world's largest prison system can hardly be considered fiscally conservative.

Numerous studies have found that prison actually transmits violent habits
and values rather than reduces them. Keep in mind that most non-violent
drug offenders are eventually released, with dismal job prospects due to
criminal records. Rather than waste scarce resources turning potentially
productive members of society who use drugs into hardened criminals, we
should be funding cost-effective treatment. As far as crime is concerned,
alcohol was once very much associated with organized crime until
Prohibition was repealed in 1933. It's time to rethink the failed drug war
and start treating all substance abuse, legal or otherwise, as the public
health problem it is.

ROBERT SHARPE The Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation Washington, D.C.