BATTLING THE CARTELS

If the United States eliminated its hypocritical drug laws -- under which
alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine are legal while pot, cocaine, and ecstasy
are not -- defeating the IT infrastructures of Colombian drug cartels would
be a nonissue ("The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.," July). Without the
financial incentive our drug laws provide, Colombian drug traffickers would
doubtless stop dismembering the bodies of their enemies with chain saws and
move on to less destructive fields of activity (copying CDs, for example).
The United States has spent billions to eliminate drug exports from
Colombia, and as your article points out, cocaine shipments are almost
twice what they were in 1998. Instead of endlessly playing catch-up against
a force we'll never defeat, we must remember why we're in this situation in
the first place.

W. Eric Martin

Blackstone, MA