REPEATING THE FOLLY OF PROHIBITION

To the editor:

One might have thought a country that had gone through Prohibition in
1920-1933 would have avoided another moral crusade over what its
citizens ingest. But, no, we now have the "war on drugs," another
campaign of zealotry doomed to failure after years of stupefying
costs, corruption and erosion of civil liberties.

Hardly a day goes by that the newspaper doesn't have several
drug-related articles. Recently we've had stories about alleged
drug-dealing by a St. Petersburg police officer and the St. Pete Beach
police arrest (entrapment?) of football great Lawrence Taylor.

Earlier, we had the unintentionally hilarious story of Florida drug
czar James R. McDonough proposing the testing of a fungus that would
defoliate marijuana plants. The fact that this guy has not been
laughed out of town is further proof that humor is one of the
casualties of war.

Enough! Enough of this stupid drug war. The government shouldn't be
given a right to tell its citizens what to ingest. The proper roles of
government in this situation should be the same it ended up performing
in the case of alcohol: legalization, regulation, taxation and education.

Bob Taylor
St. Petersburg