BENEFITS OF LEGALIZING DRUGS

Former Baltimore police Officer Peter Moskos was right on mark about the
violence associated with drug prohibition being far worse than the damage
inflicted (and self-inflicted) by the actual use of illegal narcotic drugs
("Take the violence out of the drug trade," Opinion Commentary, Aug. 3).

The obscene amounts of money we have spent in the war on drugs over the
last 30-some years to suggest that our political leaders are tough on crime
have been a crime of misappropriation.

While big drug companies are nonviolently extorting citizens for obscene
profits to push legal narcotics, addicts - who are often medically disabled
and inner-city youths whom society has made no place for - are being
scapegoated.

Let's reinvest the billions we can save through decriminalization and
medicalization of drug addiction to re-educate our urban youths for
employability and entrepreneurship.

Then we can use our Drug Enforcement Agency agents to police real terrorist
threats, and retrain our overextended prison employees to work in something
other than human warehousing. Then let's offer disabled addicts medical and
psychological help as they receive their maintenance dosages of the drugs
they need, which the government can purchase dirt-cheap.

Social sanity and fiscal wisdom could and should trump political posturing
and profit-taking.

And then our urban war zones could become livable again.

Ben Cohen

Owings Mills