LET'S STAY OUT OF 'FANTASY-BASED' WAR ON DRUGS

Re: "War on drugs has benefits," letter to the editor, Wednesday, Jan. 24.

Kevin Kupferschmid asks what a country without a drug war would look
like, and trots out a dystopian fantasy of a high-crime society.

But we don't have to rely on fantasy; we can look at the many European
countries that have chosen a treatment-based approach to drugs.

We don't find anything like Kupferschmid's fantasy. In Holland, for
example, the murder rate is about 20 per cent of what it is in the
drug warriors' U.S.

I'd certainly feel much safer taking a walk in downtown Amsterdam than
in Los Angeles.

Kupferschmid also overlooks the human costs of the drug
war.

The U.S. locks up a greater percentage of its population than any
other country on Earth; almost half a million of these prisoners are
locked up just for drug offences, sometimes as trivial as possession
of a joint.

These hundreds of thousands of ruined lives are discounted by the drug
warriors, perhaps because most of the victims are young, poor and black.

Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien had the good sense to keep
us out of one destructive, fantasy-based and unwinnable U.S. war.

It's hard to understand Kupferschmid's enthusiasm for taking us into
another.

John Dewey Jones

Coquitlam