READERS URGE FORWARD-THINKING SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS OF DRUG ABUSE

Three cheers for Mayor Sam Sullivan who is courageously working to
apply harm reduction policies that alleviate some of the terrible
unintended consequences of a war on drugs.

In my 26 years as a U.S. cop, 12 doing drug work, I came to realize
what should have been obvious the first day I pinned on a badge: Drug
prohibition will never work.

After 36 years of fighting the war on drugs with a budget of more
than $1 trillion, my country has quadrupled our prison population in
the last 20 years. Every year we arrest another 1.7 million people
for non-violent drug offences. Despite all this money so ill-spent
and all those ruined lives, today drugs are cheaper, more potent, and
far easier for our children to get than they were in 1970 when I
started buying them as an undercover officer. According to the U.S.
government, four million people used an illegal drug before the war
started; by 2001, the numbers had increased to 110 million. That is
the very essence of a failed public policy.

Jack A. Cole

Executive Director

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Medford, Mass.