WAR ON DRUGS IS WAR ON THE POOR

Re: "Police arrest 38 in sweep of Dunbar neighborhood," Oct. 4. The poet
and rapper Tupac wrote, "They got a war on drugs so the cops can bother
me." Judging from the picture in The News-Press, which shows an African
American being subdued by four white officers, Tupac's prophetic statement
seems to have been proven true. This African American was only another
victim of America's failed war on drugs.

The war on drugs is in fact a war on the poor. Not only in America, but
also in Colombia where America's fumigation planes eliminate the peasant
farmers' coca crops. The limited production of coca will not hurt the drug
lords, but the peasant farmer who grows coca to survive. With less coca
crops the profits and prices will rise. The wealthy drug lord will prosper
while the peasant farmer only grows poorer.

What happened on Oct. 3 was pointless because as the architect of the
sting, Police Chief Hilton Daniels said, "The people who are flowing drugs
into the area will have replacement workers within 24 hours." If this is
true, as I believe it is, what was Chief Daniels trying to do? Not fight
drugs, it would seem.

America should join Europe and wage a Treatment of Drugs not a War on
Drugs. In Europe drug users are treated as patients, not criminals. Only
when America realizes that drug addiction is a disease and not a crime can
she eradicate the evils of drugs.

Anthony Harding, Cape Coral