WESTERN LEADERS MUST BACK COLOMBIA'S COURAGEOUS STAND ON DRUGS

President Santos's call for a new approach to drugs must be supported
wholeheartedly

As you suggest, "money", not "health or morality", will be the prime
mover in "opening up a lucrative new market" for American big
business in "recreational" substances ("The drugs war is failing. We
must think again", Leader). Mass production and mass distribution of
drugs, sufficiently cheap, varied and globally accessible to overtake
criminal cartels, would have the extra commercial advantage of
perennial addiction, while any adverse medical or social effects can
be shifted on to taxpayers, as happens over sugar, alcohol and tobacco.

Just think of the additional profits and political spin-offs if the
Chinese return to opium and the Arabs to hashish in your "free and
open market". It's enough to make minds boggle -- at any rate, those
minds that survive the recommended experience.

Jason Roberston

Sheringham, Norfolk