LETTER OF THE WEEK

PROHIBITION CREATES NEW PROBLEMS

By Amy Rogers

Re "It's time to seriously consider ending prohibition on drugs"
(Viewpoints, April 5): Prohibition, whether of alcohol or the illegal
drugs du jour, never works in the sense that it fails to eliminate
the problem of drug abuse and addiction. What it does is create an
entirely new set of problems and costs through supporting violent,
organized crime, and the costs of incarceration and criminal
justice. Which is more costly to society: a small percentage of
legal drug addicts (who will probably be on welfare, but that's
cheaper than jail), or financing the Taliban and gangs at home,
destabilizing Mexican society by corrupting police forces, funding
the FARC leftist rebels in Colombia and so many drug-related murders,
gbnot to mention billions upon billions of dollars on interdiction
and incarceration? It's not a question of whether drug use is bad.
It's a practical question of how best to deal with the existence of
addictive substances in the natural world.

Amy Rogers

Sacramento

Pubdate: Wed, 8 Apr 2009

Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)

Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n388/a05.html