DRUG WAR EXTRACTS A TERRIBLE TOLL

The elephant in the room -- or
more accurately, perhaps, the giant amoeba that engulfs the whole
world and poisons every facet of human life today -- is the so-called
War on Drugs.

None of the thousands who have died on our Mexican borders have died
because of the effects of illicit drugs on their bodies. The
overwhelming cause of these deaths has been the prohibition of drugs
- -- turf wars between and among competing drug cartels. The illegality
of what are now illicit drugs produces such obscene profits that any
risk is worth taking and any official who gets in the way of such
trafficking is a target. Drug cartels are more "combat ready" than the
police.

If we treated all drug abuse as a public health problem and removed
the enormous profits from the sale of drugs, the cartels would
essentially disappear in the morning, our jails and prisons would be
relieved of non-violent drug possessors, and this country would save
about $100 billion annually on a war that the late Walter Cronkite
termed "wrong, terribly wrong."

Rodney W. Pirtle, Farmers Branch