FUNDAMENTAL ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES MAKE THE WAR ON DRUGS POINTLESS

Sir, With reference to your thoughtful editorial "The unwinnable war
on dangerous drugs" (January 15): the United States-led war on drugs
was doomed from the very beginning. Regardless of the money put into
the anti-drugs programme, one cannot nullify the basic supply and
demand law of economics.

As long as people want to purchase recreational drugs and are willing
to pay a substantial price for them, somebody will produce the drugs
and somebody else will get the drugs to the willing buyers. This is
guaranteed.

The war on drugs has transformed the US into the most incarcerated
nation in history. With less than 5 per cent of the world's
population, the US has more than a quarter of the world's prisoners.
In other words, one out of every four prisoners in the world is locked
in an American prison, thanks primarily to the US's counter-productive
war on certain (politically selected) drugs.

The US government is in no position to give any other nation advice on
how to run an anti-drugs campaign.

No other nation has wasted more resources on fighting drugs and no
other nation has imprisoned more citizens for drug law violations than
the US, yet no other nation has been less successful in solving its
narcotics problem than the US. My advice to Britain and the rest of
the world: carefully observe the US narcotics policy and then do the
opposite. Do not follow us - we are lost.

Kirk Muse, Mesa, AZ, US