WAR ON US

So the county jail is terribly overcrowded (WM, "Caged Heat," Jan. 23)?
This might be a good time to re-examine our drug policy. If we did not
pursue this awful "war" on our own population, the jail would have nearly
400 fewer inmates- and the overcrowding would not be a problem.

We need to look at our whole drug policy- a great deal of money is
involved, not to mention the basic unfairness about the selectivity of the
drugs we choose to outlaw. The U.S. spends $20 billion on prisons (one
quarter of prisoners are drug offenders);numerous industries profit hugely
from this "war," and are protected from competition by federal interdiction
of only certain drugs; and our use of deadly herbicides (chemical warfare?)
on the crops of other countries has polluted our foreign policy.

Drug trafficking is 8% of the world's trade, $400 billion a year, untaxed
and unregulated. It would not be so lucrative if it were not illegal.

The notion that we can forbid people from acquiring and using substances
that alter their mental functioning is idiotic-the world is loaded with
such substances and even the most elementary student of science can ferment
or grow or buy or combine such substances.

We would do much better to find out why some people become addicted so much
more easily than others and help them to control these tendencies. Jail has
never helped anyone.

And finally, the bigger question is why some people must, at all costs,
control the behavior of others-we could easily solve the problem of drug
use if we simply expected decent, rational behavior of everyone in public,
but allowed adults to do whatever they wish to do, so long as they assume
the cost and responsibility for their decisions.

From the viewpoint of the victims, does it really matter whether the
perpetrator was drunk, drugged, enraged, psychopathic, sociopathic,
egocentric or merely inattentive?

Edith L. Morgan

Worcester