HERRINGTON WRONG

I disagree with Gregg Herrington's March 18 opinion column, "Drug war not
over, so don't cut support." The drug war has been over for years because
it is an abysmal failure. Throwing more money into the "drug war" is not
the solution.

Care to guess which U.S. president first used the term "war on drugs?" Was
it Richard Nixon? Ronald Reagan? Try Dwight Eisenhower in 1958. It is now
2005. That's 47 years of throwing ever-increasing amounts of money at the
drug problem.

Until this country wakes up and realizes that it cannot treat the drug
problem as a criminal offense as opposed to a medical condition, the
problem will never go away. Abraham Lincoln once stated: "Government
cannot, and should not, legislate morality. It is not the government's duty
to control an individual's behavior by making moral issues a criminal offense."

Smart man. Too bad no one listens to him. It is time to end the war on
drugs entirely.

Gregory Taufer, Vancouver