NATION IS ADDICTED TO DRUG PROHIBITION

The war on drugs today is mostly about marijuana (Court ruling ensures
enforcement, June 9).

Marijuana arrests, convictions, incarcerations and the seizure of
property in marijuana cases constitute the great majority of drug-war
incidents. Without marijuana prohibition, the War on Drugs and its
bloated budgets would simply not be justifiable, nor the Drug
Enforcement Agency, nor foreign intervention, nor political anti-drug
posturing.

Without marijuana prohibition, the whole War on Drugs would soon fall
apart.

America is in the throes of an addiction, to be sure. But it is to
drug prohibition far more than to drug use.

Enormous and wildly increasing budgets are squandered on ever-higher
doses of the drug prohibition habit, and vehement denials that the
prohibition habit is the problem are heard along with pronouncements
that with one more big fix of "enforcement and interdiction" the drug
problem will be resolved.

And in great irrational fear of the imagined rigors of withdrawal, the
addict is ready to commit any disgrace, deception, crime or
doublethink whatsoever to get his fix.

Drug prohibition has become a monkey on the back of democracy
itself.

LARRY SEGUIN

Lisbon, N.Y.