'WAR ON DRUGS' IS AN UTTER FAILURE

Regarding Detective Ken Real's July 18 letter, "Drug war critic's
facts were mistaken":

I agree with the detective that the job of police is to enforce the
laws they are given. I also agree that it is essential to change laws
using established processes.

That said, I would point out that the whole of our drug war is founded
upon bad laws based on bigotry and xenophobia and no science. When
science has proven that drugs are effective medicines, the studies
were shelved and buried. One example was the 1974 government-commissioned
study to document the harm that marijuana caused. It instead found
that it shrank cancer tumors. ( See www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n572/a11.html )

For nearly a century, drug laws have been racist in origin and in
their results. The U.S. per capita rate of incarceration for black
males is now over five times higher than was that of South Africa
during the peak of Apartheid.

There are police officers and other criminal justice professionals who
are dissenting from the drug war, America's longest war, and a war
waged against our own citizens. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
(LEAP, www.leap.cc/ ) is comprised of hundreds of such professionals
who have the decency to recognize the failures bad policies have
wrought not just on the people of our country but upon the law
enforcement and criminal justice professions themselves.

As Prohibition failed our grandparents in the early 20th century, so,
too, does the war on drugs fail us now.

Allan Erickson

Drug Policy Forum of Oregon

Eugene