DRUGS: U.S. LOSING WAR

Dear Editor,

Regarding your thoughtful editorial [Extreme need, Feb. 24 Comment,
Langley Advance News], the American-led war on drugs was doomed from
the very beginning. Regardless of the money put into the anti-drugs
program, one cannot nullify the basic, supply and demand law of economics.

As long as people want to purchase recreational drugs and they are
willing to pay a substantial price for them, somebody will produce the
drugs, and somebody else will get the drugs to the willing buyers.

This is guaranteed.

The war on drugs has transformed the United States into the most
incarcerated nation in history.

With less than five per cent of the world's population, the U. S. has
more than one fourth of the world's prisoners. In other words, one out
of every four prisoners in the world is locked in an American prison,
thanks primarily to America's counterproductive war on certain,
politically selected drugs.

The U.S. government is in no position to give any other nation advice
on how to run an anti-drugs campaign. No other nation has wasted more
resources on fighting drugs, and no other nation has imprisoned more
citizens for drug-law violations than the U. S., yet no other nation
has been less successful in solving its narcotics problem.

My advice to Canada and the the rest of the world: carefully observe
the U.S. narcotics policy, and then do the opposite.

Don't follow us - we're lost.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Arizona, USA