USE BETTER SENSE

Editor, Daily News:

Re: Sept. 24 guest commentary headlined "World's environment also
victim of drug addiction."

Wallace Nichols makes astute points about the wasted program known as
Plan Colombia and/or the Andean Initiative - two different titles for
one utterly failed foreign policy.

As a recovered cocaine abuser (clean 11 years now), I weep at the
billions of tax dollars spent by the U.S. government to drop poisons
on South American farms and fields and to arm soldiers who kill and
destroy innocent civilians in their never-ending battle for control of
the country of Colombia - currently in de facto control of the coca
producers and exporters.

And as a student of economics, I am painfully aware that the power
propping up these drug lords has its source in the guaranteed
perpetual profits the illegal cocaine trade provides them.

Sadly, no matter how many thousands of hectares in Colombia and South
America on which we drop herbicides, and regardless of how many South
Americans die in this so-called drug war, not a single American
cocaine abuser is any closer to true recovery and freedom from the
cycle of drug abuse.

It's time to end this non-winnable war. Remove cocaine distribution
from the street and put it into a pharmacy so that the illegal cartels
are put out of business.

And we need to transfer the money currently used to incarcerate drug
abusers into programs which allow treatment on demand for any drug
abuser who wants it. Such treatment should be available regardless of
the drug of abuse, whether that drug be meth, cocaine, alcohol,
nicotine or opiates.

Stephen Heath

Clearwater

Public relations director

Drug Policy Forum of Florida