WAR ON DRUGS' LATEST VICTIM

The Chronicle's June 23 Page One article, "Crusading editor killed in
Mexico." about the drug cartel execution of a courageous newspaper
editor, Francisco Ortiz Franco, highlights that fact that prohibition
- - the "drug war" - is a profoundly immoral exercise unworthy of America.

The British once prohibited gin, but no other form of alcohol. We, in
an even more absurd prohibition, choose to ban some intoxicating drugs
but give alcohol a monopoly. We do this because of
"pharmacophobia."

The government rails at the dangers of illegal drugs but refuses to
offer a comparison with alcohol, which an unwitting public assumes is
less dangerous. It is not.

Alcohol - dose for dose - is generally as addictive and mind
scrambling as heroin or cocaine, but it is alcohol that is by far most
likely to provoke violent, abusive behavior, to damage the fetus and
to wreak havoc on our highways.

People will refuse, use with caution or abuse a drug in accordance
with who they are and not in accordance with which drug is available.
A particular drug is no more responsible for damage than a particular
model of car is for creating new reckless drivers.

So Franco now joins the other innocent people killed by this
prohibition and the criminal empire it has spawned: the funding of
terrorists, the corruption of democracy and foreign governments and
an endless stream of other carnage.

Jerry Epstein

Houston