CARTELS FUELED BY DRUG LAWS

Re: "Standing Up to Cartels - Killing emphasizes need for action in
Mexico," Thursday Editorials.

Mexico today is Chicago in the 1920s. A violent, ruthless black
market, a huge and expensive law enforcement effort, official
corruption and easy access by children are constants of
prohibition.

We could regulate the few drugs that are now distributed by drug
trafficking organizations as we have alcohol and thousands of other
drugs. Drugs would be sold by clerks who check for ID and sell
pharmaceutically pure products, not by teenagers on street corners.
The number of Americans imprisoned would return to about 1 in 700
instead of 1 in 100. Federal police would spend their resources
catching murderers, rapists, child molesters and robbers, not raiding
medical marijuana gardens. The sick could choose to use marijuana for
any of the myriad of conditions it is thought to successfully treat.

By doing what we're doing, the message to the cartels is unmistakable:
Carry on.

Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Dallas