DRUG WAR HYPOCRISY

The comments by Nancy Finch of the Regional Drug-Free Alliance ("Let's
See 'Which Addiction'," Oct. 23) vividly illustrate the fraud and
hypocrisy perpetrated by those involved in what Lee Carleton aptly
describes as the "Prohibition Industry."

This evil industry includes a myriad of special interests who are
profiting politically, professionally and financially from the mass
incarceration of our children, siblings, friends and neighbors, whose
only "crime" is the voluntary use of a psychoactive substance
disapproved of by the alcohol-, tobacco-, caffeine-, valium-, ritalin-
or prozac-consuming majority. The perpetrators of this atrocity
frequently and cynically claim that they are somehow attempting to
help those whom they are persecuting so brutally. The Nazis made the
same claim concerning the Jews.

Any intelligent observer can recognize that the lives of drug abusers
are made worse, not better, by Prohibition. In addition to the medical
problems associated with their addiction, Prohibition relegates drug
abusers to a life of poverty and destitution, theft, prostitution and
imprisonment. Overdoses become more likely because of contaminated
black-market drugs. Violence is produced by the monopoly on the drug
trade by organized criminal groups. Addicts are driven to theft in
order to raise the amounts of money needed to maintain a habit at
black-market prices.

Prohibition has created a massive system of slavocracy in this
country. We have more prisoners than any other nation in the world.
One in 32 Americans is either in prison, on probation or on parole.
Mass imprisonment has become a $150 billion-a-year industry. Prisons
have become the second largest employer in the nation behind General
Motors. The War on Drugs is tyranny and slavery. Drug warriors claim
to be defending "victims" of drug abuse, a matter of personal
responsibility, and then turn around and condemn these unfortunates as
felonious criminals and enemies of the state. What we need is not a
War on Drugs but a War on Drug Warriors and their lies and
charlatanry.

Keith Preston