DRUG LAWS THE REAL PROBLEM

To the editor:

The writer of your Sept. 28 editorial on drug legalization admits that
New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is right but blindly insists that we
continue "prosecuting those who consume illegal drugs and subject
themselves and their families - indeed, their progeny - to lives of
misery."

Evidently you don't get the message that drug laws are responsible for
far more "misery" than the drugs could ever cause.

People wouldn't be suffering dire effects from drug addiction if it
were not for brain-dead drug laws.

The human and financial costs you lament are the direct result of
counterproductive drug policy.

Want proof?

Well, no one was robbing, whoring and murdering over drugs when
addicts could buy all of the heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium and
anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy.
When drugs were legal, addicts held regular employment, raised decent
families and were indistinguishable from their teetotaling neighbors.

Overdoses were virtually unheard of when addicts used cheap, pure
Bayer Heroin instead of the expensive toxic potions prohibition puts
on the streets.

Compare the blissful situation before the narcotic laws with the
results of 85 years of failed drug prohibition policy.

According to Barry McCaffrey, the United States had more than 52,000
drug deaths in 1998.

More than 40 percent of all inmates in our overflowing prisons are
doing time because of drugs. Nineteen-year-olds are now the fastest
growing group of heroin users, and cocaine and heroin are cheaper,
purer and more widely available than when Nixon's all-out war on drugs
began.

That's the result of a lunatic policy, not demon drugs.

People who want to continue an insane prohibition policy should
understand that drug laws, not drugs, are the cause of most "drug"
problems.

REDFORD GIVENS
San Francisco, CA