WAR ON PEOPLE

To the editor:

Three recent articles in your paper really grabbed my attention.

The first was about the poor soul sentenced to 11 years for
possessing cocaine for the third time. The next article was about the
guy who also possessed cocaine for the third time, but as he had
quantity, he was sentenced to life in prison. The third article was
about cigarettes and how health officials have determined that ONE
BILLION people will die this century from their legal but lethal
nicotine addictions.

Now consider for a moment a world where cigarettes were outlawed and
an individual who didn't kick the habit would go to jail for 11 years
if they didn't quit smoking after being warned twice. Would you be
outraged? If a person was caught for a third time with multiple packs
of cigarettes and was sentenced to life, would you think that too was
outrageous?

The war on drugs in a misnomer. It is a war on people who use or
distribute drugs and a war on you the taxpayer who foots the bills
for such wasteful incarceration (more than $20,000 per year per
inmate) -- money that could be well spent on non-prison sanctions for
the offender with lots of money left over to give to our bankrupt
public schools or to mobilize a real campaign to educate our children
about the dangers of cigarette smoking so that they won't be one of
the billion that receive a death sentence this century.

Rick Frydman,

Lawrence