COLLATERAL DAMAGE IN A LOST WAR ON DRUGS

BRIAN MCGRORY writes, in "We've hit a new low in depravity" (Page A1, Sept.
29), that, among "the visibly shaken mayor [and his] police commissioner"
and the "grim-faced district attorney," "none of them, nor anyone else . .
. is quite sure what to do to stop" drug-related violence. The most potent
reason for the latest orgy of violence depicted in the Globe's excellent,
chilling coverage ("A city enraged: Toddler, 3 others slain in Mattapan;
officials vow arrests," Page A1, Sept. 29) is hinted at in another part of
that day's paper: the financial pages, and the item "Prison operator raises
its profit forecast." While people lay dying on the streets of Boston,
Corrections Corporation of America reported a 7.4 percent increase in
quarterly profits.

While governments around the nation teeter on the verge of bankruptcy
trying to fund municipal services, private enterprise has found a niche
supplementing bursting prison systems.

It is impossible to win the so-called war on drugs because the forces of
economics make the drug industry's product more valuable with every
ratcheting up of the laws, penalties, and enforcement armies. And so the
drug traffic destabilizes not only Boston neighborhoods, but whole nations
and regions of the world.

The United States already has the world's highest rate of incarceration,
and yet our state and federal drug warriors will doubtless be calling for
more police officers, higher sentences, and additional prisons, all of
which will produce more death and tragedy on our streets.

It has been decades since the federal government began legislating the "war
on drugs." How much longer will it take for us to recognize what fools we
have been to believe the drug warriors' propaganda?

Harvey A. Silverglate

Cambridge

The writer is a criminal defense and civil liberties trial lawyer.