PERPETUATING PROBLEM

I respect the motives of The Tampa Tribune for supporting the recent
U.S. Supreme Court ruling that police need not wait more that 15 to 20
seconds after knocking on the door of a drug suspect before entering
his apartment (Our Opinion, Dec. 9). Perhaps this time we'll get it
right. Perhaps we can discard the tools we have accumulated in our 30-
year drug war. After all, we know they don't work.

No, the police would say, keep them all and try harder. Drive the
price of drugs so high that potential users do not start and abusers
quit. But working at cross-purposes is the glitz of higher profit.
More tools in the arsenal mean more profit. We have handed police an
impossible task because a market cannot be destroyed by making it more
profitable, especially if the market is for a product that prevents or
reduces pain.

The only way to defeat the illegal drug market for keeps is to take
out the profit and remove the pain some other way. Adding tools and
trying harder sounds good and will give communities short-term relief
but just perpetuates our drug problem.

John Chase

Palm Harbor