QUESTIONS FOR US ANTI-DRUG WARRIOR

IT IS instructive to see the different American responses to your admirable
editorial "It's political if US jails 1.9 million" (CT, April 24, p.8).
While Dave Michon (Letters, April 27) points to the police-state atmosphere
created by the twin simplicities of his country's "War on Drugs" and its
populist predilection for mandatory sentencing, his compatriot, Linda Oja,
on the same page, recycles the precise rhetoric which has created the
problem in the first place. Some elementary questions for Ms Oja might
include: 1. How is that Americans are so criminally-inclined that they need
more people in jail that China has? 2. Why were currently illegal drugs
made so in the first place and have not her country's attempts to eliminate
them produced many more problems than they are ever likely solve? 3. Why
did it take her compatriots less than 20 years to learn that their
prohibition on alcohol was disastrously counterproductive and yet more than
60 to realise that their world-wide crusade against illegal drugs has been
equally so?

GEOFF PAGE
Narrabundah