LEGALIZE AND REGULATE THE DRUG TRADE

Regarding the chilling Dec. 4 front-page article "Mexico Drug Cartels
Send a Message of Chaos, Death":

This mayhem occurs as a direct result of -- and not despite --
increased enforcement of senseless policies that make drugs illegal.

As a 32-year police officer in Maryland, I have seen how the
prohibition of drugs empowers violent criminal thugs who sell them in
our cities and outside our borders.

If we legalized and regulated drugs, people would buy them from
legitimate sources instead of from illegal ones. But until that
happens, criminals will do anything to protect their profits,
including murdering rival traffickers, police officers, journalists
and children.

Seventy-five years ago this month, America's leaders took away the
profits of violent gangsters by having the good sense to repeal
another failed and dangerous prohibition, that on alcohol. Surely, it
is not too much to ask that today's policymakers consider stripping
cartels and gangs of the unregulated businesses from which they have
been able to get rich as a result of today's "Prohibition," the "war
on drugs."

Neill Franklin

White Hall

The writer is a volunteer speaker for the group Law Enforcement
Against Prohibition (LEAP).