DRUG WAR'S SOUR TASTE

Recent news reports about candy-flavored methamphetamine illustrate an
inescapable law of the drug war's black market, to whit: Hit one
popular drug hard enough to affect supply, and the professional
dealers will always come back with something much worse. We have seen
it all before: Cocaine begat freebase which begat crack which begat
methamphetamine. "Ice" will be next. It may have felt good to knock
out the majority of the ad hoc meth labs, but it's only opened the
market to vicious and over-funded drug gangs in Mexico and to
"products" such as candy-flavored meth. The principle holds for other
drugs as well. In fact, poisonous alcohol was common during
Prohibition.

You can trace all the drugs to their natural plant-based forebears. In
this instance we would have been better off to allow coca-leaf chewing
and teas long ago, before this cat got out of the bag.

Can we turn it around? Yes, but it will take political courage, not
the sort of fear-pandering most politicians have displayed on the
subject thus far. Prohibition must end before we can recontrol the
market in these substances.

No form of government regulation would allow candy-flavored meth.
Ending Prohibition would pull the market out from under the drug
gangs. We have tried drug prohibition for over 100 years, and Nixon's
drug war is in its 37th year, with results opposite to what was
intended. It's time to try another way.

D.H. MICHON

Eau Claire