DRUG WAR

As we watch the very fabric of the Constitution unravel, it is
heartening that the Review-Journal continues to expose and oppose
these egregious assaults perpetrated against our freedom.

Your Monday editorial asks, "Is it better to lose our Bill of Rights,
or to acknowledge that the Bill of Rights may make it darned hard to
win the war on drugs?" I would answer that the Bill of Rights and the
war on (some) drugs cannot co-exist. One need only look back at the
failures of the early 20th century prohibition of alcohol. As a
prohibited substance, alcohol fueled the growth of gangs and criminal
syndicates, and its black market status left its production and
distribution unregulated, filling gangsters' coffers.

The drug war is exponentially more damaging than our earlier
experiment of alcohol prohibition. It is shredding the Bill of Rights
and is a failure in fact, practice and principle.

There is no longer any doubt our liberties and the very principles
our Founders fought so passionately for are under assault. One need
not be "pro-drug" (as today's prohibitionists like to proclaim) to be
against prohibition. It is our patriotic duty to oppose these
totalitarian and un-American policies.

Allan Erickson

EUGENE, ORE.