PROHIBITION DIDN'T WORK THEN AND WON'T NOW

Thank you for publishing Mel Marshall's outstanding letter: "Drug War
Discourse Necessary For Knowledge" (11-06-03).

I'd like to add that our phony, so-called "war on drugs", has
corrupted all levels of our government from the cops on the beat to
the highest levels of our government, just as alcohol prohibition did
during our Great- Grandfathers' era known as the "Noble
Experiment."

Alcohol prohibition was terminated not because they decided that
alcohol wasn't so bad after all, but because of the crime and
corruption that prohibition caused.

Prohibiting a desired consumer product, any consumer product, does not
reduce or eliminate the demand for the product. It just turns the
distribution of the desired product over to criminals and then the
product becomes untaxed, unregulated and controlled by criminal gangs.

When Coca-Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine, and sold for
five cents a bottle, the term "drug-related crime" didn't exist.
Neither did drug lords, drug cartels or drug dealers as we know them
today.

These were all created by our drug criminalization policies-not
drugs.

When alcohol prohibition was terminated in 1933, the U. S. murder rate
declined for 10 consecutive years. Have we learned any lessons?

Not yet.

Best regards,

Kirk Muse,

Mesa, AZ