PROHIBITION FUELS CARTELS

Re: "U.S. users bankroll cartels - Officials say $14 billion spent
each year on drugs fueling Mexican violence," last Friday news story.

What the U.S. government is choosing to do is to produce a market that
is lucrative for the cartels. It is not consumers that are "making
these people powerful." It is the aforementioned profits generated by
prohibition.

The reason we made alcohol legal was to put an end to the violence,
official corruption and all the other unintended consequences
surrounding prohibition.

We wisely decided to make alcoholism a public health rather than a
criminal justice problem. We should begin to consider doing the same
with all forms of drug abuse, and particularly marijuana.

Rodney W. Pirtle, Farmers Branch