INTERCEPTING DRUGS

Your recent article about Charleston police who go to Santee looking for
potential drug traffickers on I-95 exposes one aspect of the drug problem
that helps keep drug use so damaging and a criminal offence. The Charleston
Police Department has taken advantage of a part of the rip-off from the War
on Drugs.

It is not only a big moneymaker for the traffickers, it's a big moneymaker
for the police and all of the drug enforcement folks.

If our city hired 200 to 300 hundred more police officers, they could be
sent to Florida, New York, the Mexican border and anywhere that drug
interception could occur, and make our police the richest in the nation,
along with an increase in the cost of drugs, the number of traffickers and
the related crimes associated with the drug underworld.

BILL UPSHUR

Johns Island