THE DRUG WAR AND PROHIBITION

In reference to Robert Sharpe's letter, "Drug War Worse Than Drugs" (Jan.
26), I'd like to add that if tough-on-drugs policies worked, the quixotic
goal of a drug free America would have been reached a long time ago. And if
liberal marijuana laws created more drug use, the Netherlands would have
much higher drug usage rates than the US. It does not. In fact, the Dutch
use marijuana and other recreational drugs at much lower rates than
Americans do. See http://www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm.

Beyond just the use of marijuana as medicine, why do so many of our
politicians want to keep criminalizing a natural herb that has never been
documented to kill a single person? Why do apparently intelligent people
want to arrest and jail other people who use or sell an easy-to-grow weed?

To understand, study the history of US alcohol prohibition. The gangster Al
Capone made most of his illegal money from alcohol prohibition. Capone
often bragged that he "owned" the city of Chicago and indeed, he had most
of the politicians and police who ran the city on his payroll. Al Capone
was a successful businessman and it's not unreasonable to suspect that the
drug cartels of today are following his business model.

It's also not unreasonable to suspect that the drug cartels may have many
high-level politicians and police officials on their payroll. Obviously,
those politicians would advocate the continuation of drug prohibition,
which is making the drug cartels so fabulously wealthy.

I'm not saying that any specific so-called "drug warrior" is on the payroll
of the cartels -- I'm just a little suspicious of the motives of all of the
drug-war cheerleaders.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, AZ