NO PRAISE FOR A 'DEATH DEALING DRUG CRUSADE'

To the editor:

(Re: Schools program worthy of praise, Oct. 31)

It is tiresome to see the drug crusaders trying to justify their
destructive inquisition with notions of "saving people from
themselves." The notion of a drug free America is pure madness and
very harmful.

The claim that drug warriors are saving people by throwing them into
prison is a huge lie. A lie so big that most people never question it.
However, when we examine the results of drug prohibition we quickly
learn that the drug crusade has failed on every front. Never since the
drug laws went on the books has there been a reduction in drug use. In
fact, we have more drug addicts now percentage wise than there were
when the drug bans began.

A really good reason to end a futile drug war is the crime, disease
and death it causes. There was no such thing as "drug crime" before
drugs were prohibited.

Search the archives in vain seeking a theft, a robbery, an assault or
a murder connected with drug use before drug prohibition began (1914).
Addicts were not robbing, whoring and murdering to get drugs when they
could buy all of the heroin, morphine, cocaine and anything else they
wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. Before prohibition,
a legal heroin habit cost less than tobacco addiction (50c per week)
and "drug crime" was unknown. There were no gangs shooting it out over
drug turf. The term "drug crime" is an invention of prohibitionists
trying to hide the effects of their failed drug policy.

Before drug prohibition, addicts held regular employment, raised
decent families and were indistinguishable from teetotalers. The
"junkie dope fiend" is a creation of drug prohibition, not a natural
consequence of addiction. All of the crime, disease and death
associated with drugs came after the drug war began in 1914.

"Drug deaths" were extremely rare when addicts used pure
pharmaceutical drugs, so the drug crusaders must accept responsibility
for every "life that has been brought down or cut short because of
drugs." The fact that lunatic drug warriors are indoctrinating our
children into a drug policy that causes nothing but death, disease and
crime is perverse.

People who doubt the destructiveness of a drug crusade need to
consider the fact that the US had the worst epidemic of teen
alcoholism ever during

alcohol prohibition. The "Noble Experiment" which was done to "save
the children from booze" had the opposite effect. Kids as young as 12
years of age were customers in speakeasies which never checked IDs for
age. A kid could get all of the rotgut liquor they could pay for --
exactly the same situation that exists with outlaw drugs today!

Drug gangs, criminal drug cartels, drug crime, overdoses, blood borne
injection diseases and "dope fiend junkies" are all consequences of an
ill-conceived drug war that has been failing since 1914.

Ralph Givens

Dale City, Calif.