METH PROBLEM IMMINENTLY PREDICTABLE ...

Editor:

In his May 22 Op-Ed. Scott Perry called methamphetamine a "virus."
Certainly he knows it's not really a virus and is using the idea of
infection metaphorically; however, such use is still misleading because it
implies that Eastern Kentucky's meth problem came from out of the blue. Not
so; the entire nation's meth problem was not only eminently predictable;
it's simply another result of our federal government's stubborn belief that
enough cops, money, and prisons can actually make drug prohibition work.

We're really relearning two lessons about illegal markets that we should
have gleaned from the failure of Prohibition: the first is that an illegal
monopoly commanding huge profits never lacks for willing workers - no
matter how many may later be arrested. The second is that even though most
cops remain honest; it only takes a few corruptible ones to insure the
delivery of lucrative contraband.

The amphetamines marketed by the pharmaceutical industry as 'diet pills' in
the Fifties were safe; they were known as 'mother's little helpers' by the
housewives who abused them. Now we have ever larger drug task forces
cleaning up an endless string of polluting meth labs while in vain pursuit
of legions of meth cooks and armies of tweakers afflicted with failing
health and rotting teeth.

Is society really better off?

Tom O'Connell MD

San Mateo, CA