HERE'S A BETTER WAY TO FIGHT DRUG WAR

Letter to the editor

Your Sunday article on the U.S.-supported military buildup in Colombia
referred to that country as the world's major supplier of cocaine. No
mention was made of how the United States is still the world's major
consumer of cocaine.

Recently I talked with a Colombian professor at a worldwide gathering here
in New Hampshire. He displayed the same discouragement with the coming U.S.
aid as did your article. He was concerned that so little of the new $1.3
billion U.S. anti-drug aid package is going toward building up his
country's strife-torn economy and infrastructure.

The other $1.1 billion is going to support a government war on the farmers
in the Amazon jungle, the guerrillas at the other end of the country and
the drug lords in the middle who all make piles of money on cocaine
distribution.

This U.S.-financed war will have less chance of success than our support of
South Vietnam 35 years ago. As in Vietnam, the United States is pursuing a
losing strategy in Colombia by providing huge foreign assistance for a
military build-up to achieve political stability and economic growth in a
land of poor farmers, widespread guerrillas and a government in disarray.

The United States would be better served, as would the people of Colombia,
if the United States would take away the reason such a high price is paid
for cocaine and other narcotics.

We can do this by treating narcotics the same way we do tobacco and alcohol
- - by making it illegal for minors but legal for adults who use it without
harming others.

We can punish people who abuse narcotics to the point of harming others,
just as we do with drunk drivers. But making the sale of cocaine and other
narcotics legal would drop their price and dry up the flow of money
supporting the drug lords and guerrillas in supplier countries.

This would also allow the billions of dollars this country is paying for
anti-drug wars to go instead to help the farmers, local merchants and local
government officials in the supplier countries to improve their economic
and social conditions.

The likelihood of success with this two-pronged approach would be much greater.

DAVID FREEMAN-WOOLPERT

Pembroke