A STRANGE WAR

Regarding the Aug. 9 article "Alcohol masks anger, survey says": The
financially and politically influential alcohol lobby successfully
opposes the inclusion of alcohol in government anti-drug ad campaigns
and, in doing so, perpetuates the ignorance that kills our children.

I would add that the anti-drug ad campaign begins to look extremely
stupid when one realizes that the very, very expensive ad campaign
that ignores alcohol concentrates on cannabis, which has no lethal
dose and whose pharmacological effects have not caused a single death
in more than 5,000 years.

Maybe the politicians are required to adhere to the party line of
prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison industrial
complex, the drug testing industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA
and the politicians themselves can't live without the budget
justification -- not to mention the invisible profits, bribery,
corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them.

The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist
enforcement policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties
that are supposed to be inalienable, according to the
Constitution.

Mark Van Honts, Fort Worth