CASUALTY COUNT TOO HIGH IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

I have concluded that the casualties of the "war on drugs" are just too
high. I don't smoke, use alcohol or any "drugs", but I think that this form
or prohibition has failed. It is true that drugs ruin lives, but so do
alcohol, tobacco and motor vehicles. I don't see our prisons full of those
"trafficking" in those items!

What the attempt to suppress drugs with police action does is to raise the
price on the street and encourage the whole distribution to be done by
criminals.

The "war on drugs" is a form of civil war, with addicts and peddlers vs.
the police and the "justice" system. The extreme case of this, projected
on innocent people, is the U.S.'s announced plans to spend several billions
in Colombia to shore-up their military to fight the guerrillas and try to
eradicate the source of the drugs which are so much in demand in the U.S.

One side of this war will be paid for by the U.S. taxpayer (and any other
governments they can coerce to join) and the other by U.S. drug users. Many
thousands of innocent people in Colombia will be the victims. This is a
despicable, insane, scenario!

Instead of all this destructive folly, we should put our money into
treatment programs for the addicted. There are many models around the
world that are better to copy that the U.S. "war on drugs".

Robert McInnes, Victoria