Re: "The Cartel" (Insight, July 9):

An interesting and alarming section regarding the drug cartels of Baja
California. I hope it is not pedantic to point out that the lion's
share of the $52 million estimated spent annually by the cartel for
various official protections originates here in America.

Those of us who have been interested in this area have watched the
flow of drugs into the United States increase exponentially, almost in
lock step with our funding of the so-called war on drugs.

We have also watched the laws unevenly applied within racial groups.
Unbelievable sentences of incarceration are handed out.

What is the ratio of real drug dealers to penny-ante drug pushers in
this era of overcharging and oversentencing? Seventy percent of our
prison population is made up of nonviolent drug offenders.

And who among us has not seen on television or read in the newspapers
the egregious degrading of our Constitution? Will it ever be restored?
Have we lost all sense of proportion? Do we have any idea of what we
are freely sacrificing?

This is a war. That means we have to think about what it is we hope to
achieve in this struggle and not be taken in by our own propaganda. It
appears that the purpose of this war is to end all illegal drug use in
this country. Nobody seems to have asked whether such a thing is
possible, especially considering that it's a behavior as old as mankind.

Furthermore, calling these drug dealers "scum" and "purveyors for
profit of human misery and degradation," may be an accurate portrayal,
but it still reminds me of an hysterical American press proclaiming
"Hang the Kaiser" during World War I, and only underlines the fact
that the argument for continuing this war has descended into the hysterical.

And I for one am tired of paying taxes and seeing my constitutional
rights eroded bit by bit to support an hysterical, useless, morally
wrong and fascistic approach to an issue that belongs entirely between
a doctor and patient: drug addiction.

It's time to end this stupidity now.

Matthew Bright,
Rosarit