SHOULD U.S. END WAR ON DRUGS?

The authors of the book "The New Prohibition" are certainly right when they
document that drug prohibition has been a failure and has resulted in
"unintended consequences" that have adversely impacted the American public.
Your own call for a repeal of minimum mandatory sentencing and to allow
state governments to implement their own drug policy is certainly a
sensible place to start.

However, William F. Buckley's call for heavy regulation and taxation of
"legalized" drugs is in truth a form of prohibition called
"neoprohibition." This approach does reduce the harm of prohibition, but
why should we accept such a half-measure? Full legalization would
completely eliminate the harm of prohibition and illegal markets and bring
the full force of market regulation and social institutions to control the
harmful effects of drug abuse. A free society rests on the proposition that
people are allowed to fail and on the experience that only a free society
is capable of adequately dealing with problems associated with the
inevitable fallibility of man.

Mark Thornton, Auburn, Ala.

The writer is a senior fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute.