ANTI-POT TAX DOLLARS GO AGAINST PEOPLE'S WILL

The story in the March 18 Mercury about John Walters [Democracy in
Peril], the federal drug bureaucrat, was illuminating. The fact that
the federal government will continue to pour my tax dollars into a
bottomless pit and insist I follow the rules is tantamount to a
dictatorship. Mr. Walters ought to resign from office if he is
unwilling to allow the people to choose their own laws. Spending my
tax dollars on interference in state policies and campaigns goes
against my will. Mr. Walters and federal authority ought to realize
that NO LAW will be respected or can be enforced unless supported by
the moral sense and the common conscience of the communities affected
by it.

I am convinced that prohibition, wrong in principle, has been equally
disastrous in consequences in the hypocrisy, the corruption, the
tragic loss of life and the appalling increase of crime that have
attended the abortive attempt to enforce it. Allowing Mr. Walters to
be above state laws contributes to the weakening of the sense of
solidarity between citizen and the government, which is the only sure
basis of a country's strength.

Jeanne M. Ferguson,

West Roxbury, Mass.