TAKE CONTROL OF DRUGS

The issues of drugs and gangs are very interesting to me. The last
five years, I worked at a local detox unit, predominately serving
crack addicts. I've been a volunteer at a local prison every week
since 1995, and I've been in recovery myself for 20 years. In my
experience, when a young person dares another to try drugs, there's
usually a financial incentive involved. Making drugs legal again, to
be sold at ABC stores to users 18 and up will remove much of that
problem. Any person peddling drugs on the black market, by himself,
is living very dangerously. So it's a logical development to seek
safety in numbers by forming gangs. Again, bringing the drug
marketplace back under state control will go a long way in solving
the gang problem. Then, not having to fight a drug war any more, all
the billions of dollars we would save could be spent on treatment
programs, or returned to taxpayers.

DAVID POLEWKA

Chapel Hill