To the Editors,

In response to the two letters printed in your issue of October 9th under
the headline "Demand Side Drug Control" allow me to make the following
points. Mr. Alberga is correct in many of his assertions regarding the
folly of interdiction, but he is misguided when he suggests that our
efforts at alternative crop programs in Latin America have been effective.
The indigenous peoples of South America have been growing coca for
thousands of years without, apparently, destroying themselves in the
process. The crop is especially suited to this environment and their
cultures have grown up around it. U.S. efforts to force local farmers to
grow alternative crops have been, according to the Andean Information
Network, "a true failure" with unsuitable crops yielding unsatisfactory
harvests. In addition, most of the money (some estimate as high as 99%)
that is earmarked for these projects has been lost in the vast Drug War
bureaucracy without doing farmers, who are being forced to give up a chance
to make a living wage growing coca, much good at all.

For the U.S. to insist upon the reordering of a foreign, eons-old
agricultural society, by the threat and application of force, in the hopes
of controlling our own citizens indulgences seems the height of arrogance.
Further, to believe that force can ever overcome the immutable economic
laws of supply and demand, especially in a lucrative black market created
by the United States own policy of prohibition, is either disturbingly
naive or infuriatingly disingenuous.

In the second letter, Ms. Logan, while perhaps overly optimistic regarding
the possibility of a mass rejection of forbidden substances by those now
supporting the trade, is right on target when she says that the ultimate
responsibility for an individual's actions lies with the individual. That
is why our current policy of prohibition, with an ever-expanding law
enforcement bureaucracy filling up prisons in an effort to save the
citizens of a free society from themselves, is doomed to tragic failure, no
matter how many tax dollars, and lives, are wasted in the effort.

Sincerely,
Adam J. Smith