THE LATEST FINAL SOLUTION

For those who still promote drug prohibition as a cure for social ills, a
recent report by Human Rights Watch should be an ear-splitting wake-up call
[News Analysis, June 9].

The report raises serious questions about equal justice in the United
States, but those of us who follow the drug war closely aren't surprised at
all. The drug war initially was implemented to maintain racial disparity.
Drugs associated with particular ethnic groups were outlawed in a conscious
effort to control those groups. Hamilton Wright, who helped to promote the
first federal drug laws in the early part of the 20th century, used this
reasoning to support cocaine prohibition: "Cocaine is often the direct
incentive to the crime of rape by the Negroes." Others used similar
language when they talked about opium use by the Chinese or marijuana use
by Mexicans.

But as the Human Rights Watch report has been issued in more politically
correct times, I suspect many supporters of drug prohibition will say they
abhor racial inequities in drug sentencing, even though they also believe
the drug war should be "mended, not ended." The sincerity of such
statements will be at best questionable. A look at the history of the drug
war shows it is now smoothly functioning, just as its designers intended.

Stephen Young, Roselle