Your editorial offers great support to our country's misguided drug
war but little support for solutions to Colombia's problems. The U.S.
drug war is a failure. Interdiction is a failed policy. Destroying the
source of the drugs is a failed policy. You mention nothing about the
helicopters that the $1.3 billion will provide for the Colombian
government to keep its opposition under control.

The use of $1.3 billion toward education and treatment of drug
addiction in this country would be more of a solution. And the real
solution is to finally learn from our lessons of the Prohibition
era--that making alcohol illegal increased the cost and the
desirability of booze and created a plethora of criminal activities in
our country and abroad. It would be helpful if The Times would cease
pandering to this hopeless government policy.

Ralph Long
Newport Beach