IT'S OBVIOUS WHAT EX-DEALERS WOULD DO

I learned something about how drug prohibition generates crime during
my 18 years of police service. Eighty percent of my property-crime
case load was caused by addicts needing money to pay sky-high prices
for crack, etc. Legal crack would cost an addict about a dollar per
day, as would heroin and amphetamines.

Ronald Shafer (Letters, Dec. 30) worries about what drug dealers would
do without their prohibition-generated jobs. The one million teens who
sell drugs would begin flipping burgers and mowing yards. Serious
thugs will rob banks where we will capture or kill them. Or was Mr.
Shafer suggesting to continue prohibition as a jobs program for bad
guys?

Howard J. Wooldridge

Education Specialist Law Enforcement Against Prohibition Washington