The Office of National Drug Control Policy, through its ads televised
during the Super Bowl [and in The Times, Page A15, Feb. 4], would have us
believe that those who consume prohibited drugs are in effect supporting
terrorists. This is simply typical drug-war-speak, rhetoric designed to
emotionally rally support for escalation of the unwinnable war on
noncorporate drugs.

In tying drug-trade profits to terrorism this government agency clearly
shows us why the drug war and prohibitions should end. Clearly, the more
successful the efforts are in interrupting drug flow, the higher the
profits become for those involved. The drug war thusly serves as a
protection racket for those high profits. It's the ONDCP, our national drug
policy and drug prohibition that have made simple garden products more
valuable than gold and handed terrorists a means to support their
activities on a silver platter.

The yet-to-be-learned lesson of the drug war is that good intentions can
become liberty-consuming bureaucracies creating their own reasons to exist
and expand with time. Let's all pray the war on terrorism (a response to
administer justice for the crimes of Sept. 11) does not become a similar
institution.

Richard L. Root, Westminster

I find the recent television and print ads linking drug use and terrorism
to be very disturbing. Although it is not unlikely that some drug money
does get funneled to terrorist organizations, the sole reason for this is
the current state of prohibition. Just as alcohol prohibition fueled
organized crime back in the 1920s, the war on drugs fuels crime today. In
1929, when President Hoover appointed a commission to study the
overwhelming disobedience to Prohibition, that commission concluded that
Prohibition was unenforceable. Nothing has changed since then.

Jerry Parsons, Long Beach

So now the U.S. government thinks it's OK to blame drug users for the
terrorist attacks. "I helped blow up buildings," said one young man in the
commercial aired during the Super Bowl. Both spurious and sensationalist,
this is the most offensive propaganda yet to come out of our futile war on
drugs. Our drug money supports terrorism, but our oil money doesn't? When
will we see the president and vice president in a commercial saying, "I
helped blow up buildings"?

David Spancer, Eagle Rock