DRUG LAWS CREATE FINANCIAL REWARDS

I am disturbed by several statements in the article about the two men found
guilty in a drug dealer related murder last December. The first is Judge
Paul Higginbotham's' admonishment of the two defendants for being black and
selling cocaine to blacks. From the description of the events, one of the
defendants owed the victim $9000.00.

Maybe I am mistaken but seems that if you are the one owed money for
cocaine you sold it. So it seems the judge wanted to make this statement in
his final remarks but one of the persons who really should have heard it is
dead.

Also, the failure of prohibition seems lost on him. He chastises the
defendants about dealing being the only way to make a living. It may be
news to the kind judge but lots of folks would find making thousands of
dollars on a drug deal to be a nice way to make lots of money. By anyone of
any color.

Yet he sits in judgment over the results of over 60 years of prohibition
and still does not see that it is all about making substances costing
pennies worth thousands of dollars simply by making them illegal. This is
the true face of prohibition. Victims, defendants, police, lawyers, and
judges blindly and sometimes viciously plunging down the abyss of madness
with no one at the brake. All I can say is how many more is enough before
we can call a truce?

Bruce Rideout, Madison