RISE IN CRIME

To the editor:

Thank-you for publishing Dave Ashby's outstanding letter (Legalization of
drugs would end several ills," March 6, 2002).

I'd like to add that almost all so-called "drug-related" crime is caused by
drug prohibition, not the drugs themselves. Nobody was robbing, stealing or
committing acts of prostitution to obtain money to purchase drugs when
pure, pharmaceutical-grade heroin was legally available at local pharmacies
for about the same price as aspirin.

If recreational drugs are of known quality, known potency and known purity,
deaths from drugs will be a small fraction of what they are today. Canada's
rate of murder and other violent crime is a small fraction of U.S. rate.
That will soon change if Canada adopts U.S. drug policies.

Kirk Muse,
Mesa, Arizona

(Defining "recreational" is the big problem.)