WAR ON DRUGS IS REALLY A FUTILE WAR WITH OURSELVES

Re: U.S. aid to Colombia.

Here comes another Vietnam! We will train the military of a government
unpopular with its people. Presumably that military will win such battles
as occur in a fluid guerrilla war, and the more victories we win the worse
the situation will get. The drug crop cultivators will find new fields
moving into neighboring nations, which will then need help. We will be
viewed on the ground as imperialist bullies, who are foolish and ultimately
impotent.

If this extension of the "drug war" occurs, hopefully it will prove to be
the disastrous finale that finally wakes up the American people to the
immorality, the expense, and the futility of what is really a war with
ourselves.

As a society, we throw our political, technical and organizational skills
against drug importation, distribution and consumption. We build prisons
and wreak Draconian sentences on citizens, mostly young and black.

At the same time, we as a society pay whatever is the going price to
acquire and use the drugs we are campaigning so hard against. If our
society's hunger for first-class medical care for all was as strong as our
society's hunger for drugs, we'd find plenty of money for universal medical
care.

We pay for the drugs, and we pay for the war against them.

When will we wake up and discover, "We have met the enemy, and he is us"?
When we do, then perhaps we can define and try to cope with the real problems.