Note: This is the third positive response to a Standard Times OP-ED, which
can be found at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98.n489.a01.html

DRUG PROHIBITION IS UNDER HEAVY ATTACK

I commend your decision not to revive the Drug Watch column and your
editorial explaining that decision, but I would go a stop further. "A
tactic that didn't work then and didn't work now" is also an apt
description of the national policy of "war on drugs," also known as
prohibition. The orthodoxy of this ideology is so corrosive that in its
name we have allowed our dearest civil liberties to be stripped away, yet
it is so entrenched that until recently to question it was to be labeled as
a member of the lunatic fringe.

Last month, 500 prominent and accomplished men and women from all walks of
life and many nations signed an advertisement calling on U.N. Secretary
General Kofi Annan to stop pouring money into the failed policies of
prohibition. Their letter declared, "We believe the global war on drugs is
now causing more harm than drug abuse itself." It cited the corruption and
violence, adverse effects on public health and the environment, lost tax
revenues, and wasted lives associated with the policy of prohibition. The
signers of this letter included not only academics and civil libertarians,
but present and former government officials from the U.S. and abroad, three
sitting federal judges, and current and former high-ranking police officers.

Unfortunately, readers who depend on this newspaper remained ignorant of
the publication of this extraordinary letter.

Hitherto unthinkable thoughts about the pros and cons of legalizing drugs,
about what it would mean to treat drug abuse as a public health problem
rather than a criminal and military problem, have finally begun to
percolate into our national discourse.

The Standard-Times would perform a great service to its community by
letting the readership in on the conversation.

DEBORAH G. ROHER New Bedford

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski