TIME TO SCRAP DRUGS WAR

READING Coun Andrew Feather's recent comments in "Mailbag" about drugs shows
just how far out of touch the Conservatives are these days.

We've had the "war on drugs" for nearly 30 years now and in that time the
problems surrounding illegal drugs have grown and grown. We can look around
the world, to the U.S., the home of drug prohibition, and see the mess there
and we can look at Holland, with its cannabis coffee shops, and see a much
better situation.

The drug war has, simply, failed and failed badly and the only possible way
forward is to scrap it.

Andrew Feather and his party will have none of this, though, they want to
spend a huge amount of money enforcing a regime regarded with contempt by a
huge section of the population. He fails to understand that conflict is no
way to address such a serious issue, yet conflict is all he and his party
offer. They call it "zero tolerance" and it is madness.

Prohibition causes ignorance and it keeps these potentially dangerous
substances in the hands of organised profit motivated criminals.

Not all, but most of the problems associated with drugs are caused by the
law and by people like Andrew Feather.

Derek Williams
Pembroke Road, Norwich