FAILED PROHIBITION

With all due respect to Chris Fitzmaurice (Voice, April 20), America's
longest war has been neither Vietnam nor Roe vs. Wade, but rather our
84-year-old drug war.

In noble but misguided pursuit of a "drug-free America," the United States
- -- land of the free -- has become the world's No. 1 incarcerator, our
prisons and jails swelling with young, nonviolent offenders. We have
chipped incessantly away at our Second, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment
protections, and we have spent hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars
in the process.

And what have we accomplished? We've created and enriched an enormous
global criminal network; addictive substances of unknown purity are widely
available in our schools, playgrounds and neighborhoods; and our children
have come to view our laws as weak and ineffective.

It's time for America to rethink our failed prohibition and to end
America's longest war before more of us, and more of our children, become
casualties.

Adam J. Smith, Washington, D.C.