WE MUST OFFER HELP, NOT SIMPLY JAIL TIME

I am appalled that the media continues to sensationalize meth lab busts
(front page of May 3 Herald Democrat) while burying the result of our
misguided drug laws in the back portion of the A section (U.S. Prisons
Swell in '04, 4-25-05).

If we continue to treat addiction as a crime rather than an illness and
prohibition allows people to make $20 off a nickel's worth of ingredients,
we can expect less of our tax money to go towards education and more of it
towards locking up the uneducated. I hope, with all my might, that I am not
the only Grayson County citizen that noticed the swelling prison article
revealed the increase in our incarceration rate is largely due to
mandatory-minimum drug sentences. It did not mention, though, that the
United States of America now has the highest incarceration rate in the
world! Sadly, young, minority men are carrying the heaviest load of these
failed policies.

Turning drug users into unemployable ex-cons is a senseless waste of tax
dollars. It's time to declare peace in the failed drug war and begin
treating all substance abuse, legal or otherwise, as the public health
problem it is.

Jodie Harrison

Pottsboro