PROHIBITION HAS ALWAYS FAILED

Editor:

Re: Our drug strategy is not working

Mary Hartman is certainly correct that drug prohibition is not
working. The plain truth is prohibition of drugs or anything else with
a market demand has never succeeded.

The true depth of the failure of the drug crusade is seen by the fact
that everything connected to banned drugs is far worse than they were
beforehand. Before we had drug laws, there was no such thing as "drug
crimes." No one was robbing, whoring and murdering over drugs when
addicts could buy anything they wanted cheaply and legally at the
corner pharmacy. There were no drug gangs and no drug cartels before
prohibition made drug dealing the most profitable commodity on earth.

Before we had drug prohibition, most addicts worked ordinary jobs,
raised decent families and were indistinguishable from teetotalers.
The "junkie" is a creation of a lunatic drug policy.

Our drug problems are the creations of hypocrites who claim to be
"saving people from themselves" while causing a hundred times the
troubles legal drugs ever did. The solution is to repeal the drug laws
at the bottom of all "drug problems."

Instead of pursuing the impossible dream of a "drug-free" society, a
much better course would be to regulate drugs for adult use the way we
do with alcohol. Regulation will end the cartels and drug gangs more
surely than any amount of law enforcement.

RALPH GIVENS

Daly City, Calif.