MOTIVES FOR DRUG WAR

Re "Drug war lows: Milton Friedman's 30-year-old advice," July 6 editorial:

Truth to tell, the drug warrior police, politicians, officials, media and
civilians ("secretly") don't list victory as an objective in their
expensive and oppressive trillion dollar war. When they do spout their
"zero tolerance/total victory" rhetoric, how many readers actually believe
them? How many actually believe that this year's multibillion dollar drug
war budget will achieve total victory after decades of billion dollar
budgets have failed?

The drug czars' and warriors' jobs depend on the perpetual prosecution of,
but never a victory in, the drug war. The politicians depend on the drug
war and its rhetoric to scare up votes (by scaring voters). The politicians
also rely on the drug war to sustain their constituent industries and
institutions that depend on the economics of prohibition in order to make
generous profits and campaign contributions.

Remember what H.L. Mencken said, "The whole aim of practical politics is to
keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by
menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the party
line of prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison and
military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the "drug
treatment" industry, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the CIA,
the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the politicians themselves et
al. can't live without the budget justification, not to mention the
invisible profits, bribery, corruption and forfeiture benefits that
prohibition affords them.

The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement
policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are supposed
to be inalienable according to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

MYRON VON HOLLINGSWORTH

Fort Worth, Texas
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Should End War On Drugs

Bravo to the author of the July 6 editorial "Drug war lows: Milton
Friedman's 30-year-old advice":

Mr. Friedman was 100 percent correct in thinking drug prohibition is both
morally wrong and unworkable. Thirty years of the war on drugs have proved
him right a thousand times over. If only President Bush and our other
representatives would do what is right: Put an end to the drug war.

ADAM WIGGINS

Pasadena, Calif.