TIME TO COUNT THE COSTS OF FAILED DRUG POLICIES

Your May 5 editorial regarding David Soares' comments about the
failure of America's drug policies was right on the money in most
respects. Clearly, Mayor Jennings, Chief Tuffey and Sheriff Campbell
can't "muster much of a counterargument to Mr. Soares' larger point":
that the war on drugs is a dismal public policy failure.

But your suggestion that Mr. Soares "steer clear of such easily
misinterpreted statements about whose job depends on policies that
really ought to be obsolete by now" seems misguided. It's time our
public officials fully and completely accounted for the vast sums of
taxpayer money being squandered on their counterproductive moral crusade.

In 2003, Syracuse's City Auditor Minch Lewis issued a report on the
costs of our prohibitionist drug policies in Syracuse (which is
available at http://www.reconsider.org) that caused the Finance
Committee of the Syracuse Common Council to hold hearings. Similar
audits and hearings have been held in cities across the country,
including Hartford, Conn.

Both the city and the county of Albany should follow the lead of
Syracuse to our west and Hartford to our east and thoroughly
investigate the costs of our failed drug policies. It's time to stop
throwing good money after bad just because demagogues like Mayor
Jennings and his political cronies Chief Tuffey and Sheriff Campbell
find it politically beneficial to arouse public fear about the
consequences of drug policy reform.

Insanity, as the old saying goes, is doing the same thing over and
over again and expecting different results. It's time to hold our
insane public officials accountable for the tax dollars they have
squandered (and continue to squander) on America's longest running
and most dismal public policy failure, the war on drugs.

MICHAEL ROONA

Albany