PROHIBITION FAILS

Re: "In force, C. Locks says "no"' (Feb. 20): If the City of Cascade Locks
really wants to protect its youth and adult populations from drug abuse,
they should end drug prohibition and regulate illicit drugs the way we do
alcohol.

During alcohol prohibition the United States had the worst epidemic of teen
alcoholism before or since.

Every high school had its own in-house bootlegger to keep the kiddies' hip
flasks filled with rotgut liquor and teenage drinking exploded. Entire
schools were closed because of student drunkenness.

All of that ended with the repeal of alcohol prohibition. Overnight the
outlaw whiskey sellers were gone from America's schoolyards forever.
Licensed dealers are not willing to take chances with their businesses, so
minors have a much harder time getting alcohol.

Moreover, we no longer have the thousands of cases of blindness, paralysis,
brain damage, permanent liver damage and death every year that happened
because of the alcohol ban.

Nowadays we are seeing exactly the same results with our lunatic crusade
against drugs. Every high school has three or four in-house drug dealers and
drugwise things are the same total failure as they were for preventing
alcohol use during the "noble experiment."

It's worth remembering that Eliot Ness and the revenuers never put the booze
barons out of business. Repeal and a regulated market for adult alcohol use
did that. Regulation works for alcohol and regulation will work for drugs.
Prohibition, on the other hand, has never worked for anything, anywhere,
anytime.

Redford Givens

San Francisco