COCAINE IN CANADA

Re "Same drug war, new border," Column One, June 30

Keeping a high-demand product's prices artificially high, in a
prohibited state, creates an underworld economy in which disputes are
settled through violence rather than bureaucracy and legal recourse.

I'd like to thank the United States for continually trying the same
approach to drugs, draconian enforcement above all, and expecting the
results to get better.

We can't keep drugs out of prisons; how do you expect them to be kept
out of an open society?

Maybe it's time to try something else, until there's a full-blown
gang war on both your borders. Remember how they stopped the
bootleggers in the '30s?

Mike Foster

Laval, Canada