BUCKLEY WAS RIGHT ABOUT 'WAR ON DRUGS'

I found it particularly interesting that William Buckley's death came
within a day or two of the announcement that more than one in 100
Americans are in prison.

In the requiems on Buckley's behalf, it is odd that no one decided to
credit him for the following statement he provided the New York Bar
Association: "A conservative should evaluate the practicality of a
legal constriction, as for instance in those states whose statute
books continue to outlaw sodomy, which interdiction is unenforceable,
making the law nothing more than print-on-paper. I came to the
conclusion that the so-called war against drugs was not working, that
it would not work absent a change in the structure of the civil
rights to which we are accustomed and to which we cling as a valuable
part of our patrimony. And that therefore if that war against drugs
is not working, we should look into what effects the war has, a
canvass of the casualties consequent on its failure to work. That
consideration encouraged me to weigh utilitarian principles: the
Benthamite calculus of pain and pleasure introduced by the
illegalization of drugs."

He certainly hit the nail on the head, didn't he? How many of the
millions of jail inmates are there due to this "war on drugs" -- which
apparently will never be won?

Henry Bukoff,

Duanesburg