PROHIBITION'S IMPACT

To the Editor:

We make laws for two reasons. The first reason is to protect ourselves
from each other. The second reason is to exert control over those
things that impact society.

When morality seeps into lawmaking, it demands that illegality be the
only option, and that gave America Prohibition.

It took just 13 years for America to learn that the prohibition of
alcohol was a mistake. Then, despite the painful lesson of
Prohibition, a scant four years later, America criminalized marijuana.

As a result, for the last 72 years, we have used the failed strategy
of prohibition to fight an escalating drug war, only to have the
problem of marijuana spiral out of control.

The result of devoting unlimited money and manpower is the exponential
growth of both traffic and tragedy and prisons stuffed with possession
convictions. Our only success has been to create a clone of
prohibitions' organized crime – the drug cartel.

As things are, we are condemned to mimic Sisyphus. Our mountain is
human nature, and our rock is an ubiquitous weed.

It is not too late to re-learn the lesson of Prohibition.

Walter Enoch

McHenry