IS THE DRUG WAR WORTH FIGHTING?

Prohibition Is Extreme ...

Re: "Extremists hijack drug abuse debate, getting us nowhere - Listen
to centrists on treatment, prevention, says Kevin Sabet," Sunday Points.

For decades, Sabet and his colleagues at the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy have been misinforming the public in
defense of a radical drug policy. Alcohol Prohibition is the
blueprint for today's extremist policy disasters.

Sabet praises National Drug Control Policy director R. Gil
Kerlikowske for being sensible. In a July 2010 guest column in The
Dallas Morning News, Kerlikowske justified the drug war because "23
million suffer from substance abuse or dependency." Not mentioned was
that 19 million of those abuse or are addicted to alcohol, and nearly
all the rest have a previous alcohol problem. The word alcohol never
appeared once.

Mothers Against Drug Violence is hosting the Texas Conference on Drug
Policy this week in Dallas. My colleague William Martin, senior
fellow for religion and public policy at Baker Institute for Public
Policy at Rice Institute, and I will explain critical facts obscured
from the public by Sabet and friends, the devastating consequences of
modern prohibition for our children and how we can do much better.

Jerry Epstein, president, Drug Policy Forum of Texas, Houston

.. And Has Gotten Us Nowhere

Today the cartels and assorted criminals control the production and
distribution of illegal drugs in America. Per federal studies, nearly
a million of our teens handle retail sales, several of whom are shot
dead every week. This after 40 years and a trillion dollars spent
trying to make drug prohibition effective.

Speaking as a retired detective who worked the trenches of the drug
war, I am bewildered that some, like Kevin Sabet, promote prohibition
even today. He, like many politicians, cannot bring himself to say
the three hardest words in English: I was wrong.

Will we ever be as wise as our grandparents were in 1933?

Howard Wooldridge, Dallas