DRUG PROHIBITION HAS BEEN DISMAL FAILURE

Re: "War on Drugs cannot be won" (DailyViews, June 14). America's
drug crusade is worse than a dismal failure. It is absolutely
counterproductive because there are three times the number of addicts
percentagewise as we had when the prohibitionists began "saving
people from themselves."

That's not all. Before we had drug laws, there was no such thing as
"drug crime." Addicts were not robbing, whoring and murdering over
drugs when they could buy all of the morphine, heroin, cocaine and
anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy.
There were no drug gangs, no criminal drug cartels and no societal
problems regarding addictive drugs. All of that came after the drug
laws were passed.

Every measurement of negative effects of drug use has increased
exponentially since care for addicts was turned over to police, courts
and prisons. Not one measurable benefit has resulted from more than 90
years of drug war.

It's worth remembering that Eliot Ness never put the bootleggers out
of business. Repeal and a regulated market for adult alcohol use did
that in short order and we haven't had a bombing or a shootout over a
beer route since 1933. It is lunacy to think that drug prohibition
does not operate on exactly the same principles that alcohol
prohibition did.

Ralph Givens

Daly City, Calif.