TIME TO END WAR ON DRUGS

It's a fact written in stone: "If you do not give the people what
they want they will find a way to get it."

After some 30 years of the so-called Drug War, the most significant
accomplishment is a multitude of small-time street peddlers filling
up the jails.

Watch some of the misleading reality police shows on TV, and you'll
see that the effort to curtail drug sales is pathetic.

The scenario is just about always the same. Bust into some ramshackle
house, confiscate about $300 worth of drugs. Everybody pats each
other on the back for a job well done.

As soon as they leave, things go right on as usual. You'd think,
after all these years, the politicians we elect who are supposedly in
office to protect the basic rights of the common man would have by
now gotten at least a whiff that something is seriously not working.

Right about here you must be apprised of a truism. Your average
politician is a crook waiting to happen. He goes into office owing a
bunch of favors and probably was nominated as a party hack.

Think of the consequences if drugs were legalized. Hundreds if not a
few thousand jobs would have to be eliminated, and thus the basis for
the bogus police "reality shows."

The politicians' calculated rationale for not legalizing drugs is
basically that young people will be buying fixes with their candy
money, and practically all of America will turn into a nation of drug addicts.

If you want a real fix on how ridiculous that is, understand that
alcohol and cigarettes kill more people than all drugs combined, and
both are legal.

Anyone, little children, teenagers, grown-ups and elderly people can
buy drugs on almost every other corner.

Troy M. Lindsay, Philadelphia