CONWAY SHOULD REMEMBER THE LESSONS OF PROHIBITION

If Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway really wants to get rid of
outlaw drug dealers ("Drug sweep hits 11 metro houses," Metro, April
30), he better remember the lessons of alcohol Prohibition --
particularly the fact that Eliot Ness and the Prohibition agents never
put the bootleggers out of business. Repeal and a regulated market for
adult alcohol use ended the reign of the booze barons.

The simple truth that history teaches is that prohibiting a substance
with a market share only helps career criminals who dominate the drug
black market created by lunatic drug laws.

Enforcing drug prohibition increases the price of illegal drugs
hundreds of times, making the drug business one of the most profitable
endeavors on earth. So much money can be made that no amount of
enforcement can stop eager replacements from fighting to their last
breath to take the place of those who die or go to prison before them.

The plain truth is that drug cartels could not stay in business
without America's brain-dead drug prohibition policy.

Ralph Givens, Daly City, Calif.