ILLEGAL DRUGS AND CRIME

Before seeking to expand a long-failed drug crusade with a new salvia
divonorum ban, people like state Rep. Charles "Doc" Anderson, R-Waco,
should consider the results that America's war on drugs has produced
in the last 94 years.

When drug prohibition began, there was no such thing as a "drug
crime." Addicts could buy morphine, heroin, cocaine and anything else
they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. There was no
need to rob, whore and murder to satisfy addictions.

It is impossible to find any drug crimes in the historic record while
drugs were legal. All of the drug crimes, drug gangs and criminal drug
activity are the result of a foolhardy prohibition policy. Addicts
worked regular jobs, raised decent families and were indistinguishable
from their teetotaling neighbors before drug prohibition.

Nowadays, 60 percent of the prison population is doing time for a
victimless drug crime.

Likewise, accidental overdoses were extremely rare when addicts used
pure pharmaceutical drugs. Almost every drug death before drug laws
went on the books was a suicide done because of terminal health
problems. At present, experts say there are more than 20,000
accidental drug overdoses a year. That's a lot of needless bloodshed
to justify.

Rep. Anderson's self-serving politics ignores the counterproductive
nature of a drug crusade that has caused a disaster where there was no
problem.

Ralph Givens

Daly City, Calif.