DRUG WAR IS TREASON, RESTRAINT OF TRADE

Kudos for publishing Kirk Muse's on-target assessment of "drug war
cheerleaders" [Letters, "Drug Czar Anti-Pot, Pro-Bureaucracy," April
15].

I would like to add that the U.S. Constitution defines treason as
waging war on Americans, or providing aid and comfort to our enemies.
Also, the antitrust law known as the Sherman Act clearly deems illegal
any price fixing, bid rigging or collusion between persons or
corporations that inflate prices of inferior products, cheat the
customer, restrain trade or commerce, or any attempt "to monopolize
any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with
foreign nations."

Yet news media, law enforcers and politicians alike consistently omit
such relevant and material facts even as they turn a blind eye to and
even promote foods, food supplements, drugs, deadly and defective drug
delivery devices and alcohol products that are irrefutably associated
with more than 1 million American deaths each year.

According to Title 21, Chapter 22, Section 1712, on Sept. 30, 2003,
the chapter and the amendments in U.S. Code that funded John Walters'
agency were repealed, including the provisions in Section 1713 that
authorized the secretary of state, attorney general, secretary of
agriculture, secretary of defense, director of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy and administrator of the Environmental Protection
Agency to collude with multibillion-dollar conglomerate chemical
manufacturers and private military contractors to develop and spray
herbicides to "eliminate illicit narcotics crops," specifically coca,
cannabis and opium poppy in the United States and foreign countries.

The very fact that coca, poppies and marijuana farming proliferates in
ever greater proportions across regional boundaries and international
borders should be enough evidence that such policies are at least ill
advised, and likely involve criminal collusion with companies whose
products would otherwise have to compete in a fair and open market.

Jose Melendez,

Contributing author,

Cannabis News,

DeLand, Fla.