DRUG WAR IS MISGUIDED

Re: "Guns at the ready - Colombia's FARC a threat still worth
fighting," Monday Editorials.

In 2000, the federal government created Plan Colombia that was
supposed to halt the flow of heroin and cocaine to the U.S. - all in
the teeth of that country's 38-year-old civil war.

The plan has cost about $5.4 billion. What did we get?

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, prices
did not go up, purity remained high, availability did not diminish and
the number of acres of coca being cultivated increased to 144,000.

The House Republican Study Group has called for a "leveling of
funding" for the Andean Initiative (formerly Plan Colombia).

As always, pushers and drug lords only have been made wealthier by
prohibition. Controlling, regulating and taxing drug distribution
would immediately cut off the money spigot for the FARC, to say
nothing of the Taliban.

Rodney W. Pirtle, Farmers Branch