In your Oct. 20 editorial, "Law enforcement 'drug' into Johnson mess,"
you state that Gov. Gary Johnson's advocacy of an alternative approach
"makes a mockery of the nation's drug laws" and "has damaged his
relationship with the state's law enforcement community."

Dozens of law enforcement officials have spoken out against the
nation's failed drug program. Several federal judges have criticized
the war on drugs and have refused to hear drug cases because of the
unconscionable mandatory minimums and the clear racial bias of the
drug laws.

In 1996, hundreds of prestigious scholars and political leaders signed
a public letter to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan saying that the
war on drugs is now causing more harm than the drugs themselves and
demanding an end to the present destructive policies.

Why, then, are some police in New Mexico, plus some DEA and Customs
Service people, whose jobs depend on the drug war, telling us that a
little open discussion and a variety of views on this critical social
situation is demoralizing them?

Could it be that the drug war cannot stand up to a rational, open
discourse?

Is it that opponents of the policy must be squelched with calls to
motherhood and apple pie because the war fever is irrational and
bankrupt of justification?

Or is it just that the cops' jobs depend on the present policy and
they must stop any discussion that might threaten their turf by any
means necessary?

Jim Rosenfield
Culver City, Calif.