DRUG WAR NOTHING SHORT OF NATIONAL FRATRICIDE

In his Dec. 3 letter "Marijuana prohibition is a deadly approach,"
Robert Sharpe clearly detailed what a deadly, rights-robbing charade
our elected and appointed officials, in collusion with the anti-drug
industry, have created under the guise of the war on drugs.

There's no question that all Americans in one way or another are
victims of U.S. drug policy. But drugs bear little direct
responsibility for this harm. Drugs do not kill the majority of "drug
war" casualties. Nor does an innocuous plant destroy almost every
vestige of our Constitution.

A policy that was doomed from its inception, drug prohibition,
consumes lives wholesale, exactly as it has destroyed, and continues
to injure, countless innocent American citizens almost daily. The war
on drugs is nothing short of national fratricide, pure and simple.

We surrender our rights, lives and tax dollars at an increasingly
alarming rate. Whether it's the words that are censored from our
conversations and communications; the firearm restrictions
purportedly implemented to stop warring, black market drug gangs from
murdering each other; the urine samples many are required to provide
for the most preposterous of reasons; the property seized with no
charges levied; the searches allowed on the flimsiest of evidence;
the trillion or so dollars spent on this bureaucratic catastrophe; or
the innocent Americans mistakenly gunned down by government agents in
search of contraband, the war on drugs threatens the very foundations
of our republic and our culture.

How and when it ends is entirely our decision. But one thing is
overwhelmingly clear: We must end it before it ends us.