DRUG PROHIBITION AN UNSUSTAINABLE POLICY

Dear Editor,

It doesn't make sense to blame consumers of illegal drugs for the
prohibition-related violence you described in your editorial on the war on
drugs. None of the violent acts you described were the result of the
effects on the user of the drugs themselves, but solely the result of their
prohibition.

The unregulated and untaxed street markets created by drug prohibition spur
a demand for guns that has grown into a culture of youth gun violence. The
violent desperation of addicts is caused by the inflated prohibition price
of drugs and the uncertain conditions of the street markets.

If we can't incarcerate our way out of the problem of drugs, as your
editorial admits, what purpose could possibly be served by continuing this
policy? Is it merely to assuage the moralistic indignation of vain glorious
crusaders?

Your insistence that America doesn't have the stomach to end prohibition is
a static view that sells America short. You may have just as well have said
back in the 1950s that America couldn't stomach civil rights legislation.
Americans are a basically practical and fair-minded people with an enormous
capacity for change. In the end, prohibition is an unsustainable policy
that will eventually fall of its own terrible weight.

Larry A. Stevens, Springfield, IL