DRUG PROHIBITION A BAD POLICY

Mr. Jim Bayne's column Sunday ("Mexico has a legitimate gripe when it
comes to our drug habit") refused to mention the elephant in the
room; namely, drug prohibition. As he exhorts us to only use legal
drugs, he and the prohibition crowd force us to use alcohol, a much
more dangerous drug than marijuana, to take the edge off the day at 6
p.m. He is flat wrong that marijuana is a gateway drug. Every
government research in five countries has concluded it is not (the
last was our Institute of Medicine in 1999).

Mankind has been taking mind-altering, intoxicating, addictive drugs
for thousands of years. Drug prohibition - a self-inflicted wound -
continues to be the most destructive, dysfunctional and immoral
policy since slavery and Jim Crow. As a retired police officer, I am
baffled why this country continues to cling to the notion that drug
prohibition is worth keeping.

Howard Wooldridge

Adamstown, Md.