USE COMMON SENSE

Editor, Daily News:

Wallace J. Nichols' Sept. 24 op-ed was right on target.

In an effort to eradicate Colombian coca crops used to make cocaine,
toxic herbicides are sprayed from airplanes, hitting water supplies,
staple crops and people.

The U.S.-funded aerial fumigation campaign in Colombia drives peasants
deeper into the Amazon basin, which in turn leads to more
deforestation. If South America's rain forests are to survive, the
self-professed champions of the free market in Congress had better
learn to apply basic economic principles to drug policy.

Destroy the Colombian coca crop and production will boom in Bolivia,
Peru and Ecuador. Destroy every last plant in South America and
domestic methamphetamine production will increase to meet the demand
for cocaine-like drugs.

Instead of wasting scarce resources waging a futile supply-side war
abroad, we should be funding cost-effective drug treatment here at
home.

Robert Sharpe, Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington, D.C.