DON'T BLAME DRUGS FOR SCHOOL SHOOTING

You ask: "A six-year-old boy shoots one of his classmates dead. Who is to
blame?" (In the dark heart of smalltown America, March 9)

I will tell you. America itself must "take the rap" for producing the very
situation from which we can expect such tragedy. In various stories about
the shooting we have heard the prosecutor blame "the drug culture". But
before we blame crack, or easy access to guns for the shooting, consider
that more than one author has found the reason why crack cocaine became an
"epidemic" in the United States but not elsewhere.

Even in a "drug-liberal" country such as Holland, crack use is almost
impossible to find, even in Amsterdam. Peter Cohen, in his essay "Crack in
the Netherlands: Effective Social Policy is Effective Drug Policy", says:
"In the history of modern [drug] use in the Netherlands, the political
system has never had to cope with drug use as visible proof of the deep
impoverishment of a large segment of the population."

Likewise, in Crack In Australia: Why Is There No Problem? by Stephen
Mugford, we read the author's reason: "The central point, simply put, is
that Australia does not have an underclass in the same way that the US
does."

Peter Webster- Auvare, France