Yo Cintra:

The solution to our drug problems is very simple. Repeal drug
prohibition and use the money we save to take care of the casualties
actually caused by drug use. We could also rebuild the inner cities
and eliminate most of the causes of drug abuse with the money being
wasted on drug laws.

Proof that repeal is the answer comes from the fact that no one was
robbing, whoring and killing over drugs when addicts could buy all of
the heroin, morphine, cocaine, opium and any other drug they wanted
cheaply and legally at the corner drug store. Drug crime is entirely a
product of lunatic drug laws.

The same thing happened during alcohol prohibition, when the best
efforts of the "dry's" couldn't stem the tide of bootleg booze that
flooded the country. Alcohol use dropped for the first year or so
because it took the bootleggers that long to build their stills and
organize distribution. From then on, alcohol use rose until it
exceeded pre-prohibition figures.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. reported that it was paying five
times as many alcohol-related death claims in 1925 as in 1920! Alcohol
prohibition established organized crime in the United States and set
off the biggest crime wave in history up to that time. Now we repeat
the same error with a drug policy that hands billions over to the most
vicious criminals on the planet. That's brain-dead thinking. It's
worth remembering that Eliot Ness and his untouchables never put the
bootleggers out of business - repeal did! Prohibition is the worst
possible method of drug control. In fact, if you listen to the
narcomaniacs, they inadvertently let us know that their policy offers
no control of illicit drugs at all. Because of their lack-witted
prohibition policy, we now see 13-year-old heroin users. That never
happened before drug prohibition.

How much more needless devastation will we tolerate before we demand
that these idiotic drug laws be stricken from the books? - Redford
Givens, San Francisco

(Dearest R. Givens: I agree with you about almost everything, but no
self-respecting drug pusher wants to give heroin to 13-year-olds, because
kids make terrible junkies. They don't have any money, and they're totally
unreliable as clockers if they're trying to cover their own habit. Plus,
they have truant officers and parents and counselors nearby who notice
behavioral changes and confront the kid, who then either runs away (and the
cops are brought in) or starts crying and talking (and the cops are brought
in).

However, while I agree with you about the absurd nature of drug laws,
there is no way that they could be repealed at this primitive stage of
awareness on the nature of addiction. When liquor stopped being
illegal, it became a recreational pleasure for some, and it began a
wholesale, unbridled destruction of those with a biochemical
predisposition toward alcoholism, like large amounts of the Irish and
American Indian populations. If drugs were legal, we'd still have just
as many drug addicts - they just wouldn't be as easy to put in jail. A
large number of them would wreck themselves to the level of sleeping
in doorways and eating through the trash and occasionally resort to
crime to satisfy their howling need to fix.

Unless there were quantum leaps in advancement made in the treatment
of drug addiction, and the generally walloping recidivism rate of
lapsing addicts were somehow improved, and unless in-patient
rehabilitation facilities became gloriously abundant and free to the
desperately indigent, legalizing drugs might make matters worse for a
long while, because street-level addicts might never end up with a
roof over their heads or enforced periods of sobriety if they were no
longer imprisoned.

This country has a habit of jailing the poor as political prisoners in
lieu of providing civilized options that provide help or care. This is
a short-sighted and, eventually, a way more expensive way of hiding
the dead dog under the rug, but no politician wants to be responsible
for vast, short-term expenditures to facilitate long-term gain. Only a
revolution would bring real change in our static system, and that
would be beneficial only to our grandchildren's grandchildren.
Americans don't have that kind of attention span.

Communist? Please write to: CINTRA WILSON FEELS YOUR PAIN, San
Francisco Examiner, P.O. Box 7260, San Francisco, CA 94120, or e-mail
the Psychic Supergenius at xintra@earthlink.net.)