A recent rebuttal by the Ogdensburg Advance News failed to mention several
important facts about the decriminalization of illicit substances (September
23, 1999 ). The vast majority of all illicit substances are used and sold by
nonviolent people, and despite decades of drug war policies, the number of
hardcore addicts has remained relatively steady.

For those few that do become abusers, there is little if any opportunity for
treatment, but plenty of opportunity to sit in newly constructed prisons for
decades.

Though we read "A few recreational drinks a day won't kill you," the reality
is a little different.

Alcohol use is directly involved with half of all murders, half of all
rapes, half of all traffic fatalities, half of all teenage injuries, and
half of all birth defects.

And statistically, alcohol use has killed more people this decade than all
illicit drugs this century. Yet the results of alcohol prohibition proved so
disastrous that America took the drastic step of repealing the 18th
Amendment, the only such act in US history.

However, the rebuttal did an excellent job of depicting the self-fulfilling
prophecy of drug prohibition. Prohibition does create violence, but it is a
result of profit disputes , not drug induced behavior. It is true that some
addicts rob and steal to pay for the enormously inflated costs of black
market drugs, but how prohibition will end this behavior when it is the
cause of it defies logic. And most important, despite years of escalating
drug war tactics implemented to "save our children," teenage rates of drug
use are rising, along with the purity, profit, and availability of all
illicit substances.

For those who still believe that drug prohibition is a just cause, ask why
it is that there are still illicit substances, or illicit substance
problems, in this country. Logic would dictate that after a 30-year drug
war, after millions sent to prison, and after a trillion dollars expended,
there should not be one marijuana seed on, or in, US soil.

Jeff Goodman, Lane Eagan, MN