COURIER'S SUPPORT OF WAR ON DRUGS 'UNTHINKABLE

The Courier's recent editorial applauding the war on drugs and its
continuance is empty and shallow. The so-called war on drugs has been
a huge failure, and its unwavering support by governments and
newspapers is entirely counterproductive. We never have and we never
will arrest away our community's drug problem.

We spend more than $70 billion every year in our country to stop
illegal drugs, and what has it profited us? Gangs, terrorists and
even some banana republic dictators all use the drug black market to
fund their nefarious causes as a direct result of drug law
prohibitions that have created such astronomical profits from drug
dealing. Make no mistake about it -- our laws have created this black
market. Furthermore, hemp has hundreds of domestic uses including oil
and fuel, but we ignore that phenomenal possibility. Why?

The Courier would have us all believe that blood would be running in
the streets if we legalized drugs. It already is, and we continue to
ask our police to risk their lives to stop it. We have not stopped
anything! Not one child, not one high school student, not one family
has been protected from the scourge of drug abuse. When one dealer is
arrested, two more take his place.

I take no comfort in such a system, and neither should you. No one
should think that drug prohibition has provided peace or safety
because it has been just the opposite.

Your argument is laced with statistics regarding the dangers of drug
usage. That is a very effective scare tactic, but the truth is that
any teenager can still get any illicit drug at any high school in
this country. We can't even keep drugs out of our prisons, yet we try
to pretend that the drug war has accomplished something.

The drug war is an exercise of futility and is correctly assailed by
Abraham Lincoln when he said, "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of
reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation
and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law
strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

I totally agree with the Courier that we need to fight drug abuse,
but for anyone to pretend that what we have been doing has had some
benefit is unthinkable. It is not our government's job to protect us
from our own stupidity. There are no lines of people, young or old,
waiting for the opportunity to use drugs as soon as they are
legalized. Anybody who wants to can do so now. The reason drugs are
pushed is because of their huge profits, and the huge profits exist
because of the laws prohibiting them. Take away the profit, and you
take away the pusher.

If I had to choose between keeping the course with the drug war as
presently constituted or legalization, I'd take legalization.

Richard Mack,

spokesman for LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition)

Safford