END WAR ON DRUGS

Re the "Meth menace" (Register-Guard, May 5): That meth use is on the rise
is an indictment of the insane war on drugs. We have been fighting this war
for 20 years now; our prisons are bulging with drug dissidents. Make no
mistake, they are dissidents who only choose to put something different in
their bodies than we do ours. This is why prohibition doesn't work. No one
is going to tell me what I cannot put in my own body!

Truly, Congress should not have declared war on its own people or on a
substance. And, having done something so ignorant and unethical, we the
people must suffer with all of the crime and violence in our streets and
homes, with tragic consequences for some. The writers of the Constitution
simply didn't foresee war being declared on people and things within our
own borders.

Jesse Estabrook, described in the May 5 articles, was a victim of
unfortunate circumstances. This confused 18-year-old wound up in the back
of a patrol car with 200 times a lethal dose of meth in his pockets.
Congress, in the late 1980s, passed sentencing guidelines on this and other
drugs. Poor Jesse was looking at years in prison. So he disposed of the
lethal dose. Non-lethal doses can be sold at liquor stores, generating tax
dollars for a government that is bankrupting us!

The police were only doing their jobs. It is the unethical representatives
in Washington, D.C., that we need to hold accountable for the tragic times
at hand.

Don't you see? We are going against the laws for supply and demand. Those
are God's laws. So, we truly are in conflict with God! There never has been
a drug-free America, and there never will be! One has to wonder about those
who set unachievable goals.

TERRY D. BLANEY

Eugene