SOLVE THE DRUG PROBLEM: REPEAL ALL THE LAWS

I am responding to the last paragraph in your July 3 editorial on drug
use, "Everyone's problem," asking for inventive new strategies. I make
this proposal: that this nation repeal its laws against these drugs.
This would save us about $40 billion a year in direct state and
federal costs. We could release about a million prisoners. There would
be a backlash as the drug cartels went into other forms of extortion,
just as they did in 1933. We have experimented with ever tougher
police work; the problems have gotten worse. Insanity is doing the
same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. We learned
this lesson in 13 short years, from 1920 to 1933. It did not make
alcohol safe. The traffic death toll from alcohol is approximately
20,000 per year today. What is the traffic death toll from marijuana?
About zero.

JOHN L. DITMAN

Adamstown