DRUG PROHIBITION

I couldn't agree more with Chicago Tribune reader James E.
Gierach's letter to the editor, "Drug prohibition is the source of
many social ills" (Voice of the people, July 13).

Never in the history of human civilization has prohibition curbed the
use of mind-altering substances.

Human beings by nature look beyond their present reality.

There was a time when Christopher Columbus was thought a crackpot for
proposing that the world was round.

Galileo nearly got lynched for proposing the revolutionary thought
that the Earth revolved around the sun.

It's long past time for civilized nations to realize that, just as
these "revolutionary" theories proved to be dead-on accurate, the
prohibition of marijuana, cocaine and heroin will not only prove to be
bad law but will never stop people from seeking them.

Until and unless drug use is considered a health issue instead of a
law-enforcement issue, prisons will be filled by users and funded by
the rest of us.

But the big three of the illegal drugs--which collectively kill fewer
people in a year than tobacco kills in any given week--are opposed on
lawmaking floors by the big-money killers: the alcohol and tobacco
lobbies, the prison builders and the pharmaceutical companies.

The hypocrisy is obscene.

John M. McCarthy