WE MUST LOOK TO OTHER SOLUTIONS

Editor: We absolutely must refuse to listen to the specious arguments
from the law enforcement/prison industry on how they are the answer
to the drug problem in our country.

After all, if they were the solution, don't you think that with the
trillions they have spent since the 1960s that we would see some
results other than a huge prison bureaucracy robbing our schools of
education and after-school sports monies, further exacerbating the
problem?

The proof is in the pudding.

The answer is simple, but the solution is nearly impossible when the
politicians must prostitute themselves to the prison industry in order
to get elected and mindless fools fall for their propaganda. We can
solve most of the issues related to drug abuse with one simple policy
change. All drugs should be distributed legally to the users so that
the black market for them is wiped out overnight.

The gangs in our cities that recruit our young, as well as the Mexican
mafias that have killed nearly as many souls on our border in the last
five years as we lost in the entire Viet Nam war would lose 100
percent of their funding and collapse. The users would get a little
love in the form of information and counseling when they dropped in
and treatment when they wanted it, all funded by the massive savings
from ceasing to lock up innocent people.

Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over
and over and expecting different results.

Garry Cooper

Durham