MONEY ISN'T ANSWER TO WINNING WAR ON DRUGS

I'm writing about Travis Morse's story: "Federal money flows to fight meth"
(8-17-05).

Throwing more and more money at our drug problem is not the answer. We have
been doing this for more than 35 years. The net results are that illegal
drugs are just as available today as they were in 1969. The only thing that
changes is the name of the evil drug du jure.

Today the evil drug du jure is meth. A few years ago it was crack cocaine
and before that something else.

I'd like to add that in 1969 the U.S. federal drug enforcement budget was
$65 million. Last year it was $19.2 billion. (These figures don't include
the cost of incarceration nor the state and local costs).

The $19.2 billion is greater than a 29,500 percent increase. If the price
of coffee which sold for 25 cents a cup in 1969 had increased at the same
rate, we would now be paying almost $75 for a cup of coffee.

Drug task forces are just government bureaucracies. And like all government
bureaucracies, it is guaranteed to expand. Why? Because heads of the
bureaucracies get paid in direct proportion to how many employees work
under them, not according to how well they perform. The definition of
insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a
different result. It's also a definition of stupidity.

Our nation's drug policy has been both insane and stupid. It's time to do
something different.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.