DRUG WAR

To the editor:

Major kudos for your outstanding editorial, "End the dragnets" (Nov. 4). I
especially liked your last paragraph: "If the 'War on Drugs' cannot be
successfully waged while our Bill of Rights remains in force, the problem
is not with the Bill of Rights -- it's with the war on drugs."

I'd like to add that in 1969 the U.S. federal drug enforcement budget was
$65 million. Last year it was $19.2 billion. (These figures don't include
the cost of incarceration nor the state and local costs).

The $19.2 billion is greater than a 295-fold increase. If the price of
coffee which sold for 25 cents a cup in 1969 had increased at the same
rate, we would now be paying almost $75 for a cup of coffee. More than $75
with sales tax.

But the monetary costs are not the only cost of our failed war on drugs.
The war on drugs has cost us the right to rightfully call the United States
a truly free country. If adult citizens cannot decide for themselves what
to put into their own bodies without the threat of getting arrested and
jailed for doing so, we are not a free country.

Obviously, we are not a truly free country. The words "Liberty" or
"Justice" engraved upon our currency or national monuments do not make a
country free.

KIRK MUSE

MESA, ARIZ.