HASN'T WORKED YET

To the Editor:

"Jury finds man guilty in shooting." Has anyone in Tuscumbia ever stopped
to think that Eric Moss's shooting and the hundreds of other injuries and
murders related to drug dealing would never happen except that drugs are
illegal? Moss's shooting was the result of greed, not drug intoxication.
True "drug crimes" are rare since being high usually calms aggressive
tendencies.

Colbert County District Attorney Alverson misleads the public when he
implies that "drugs" are causing the problems created by America's lunatic
drug crusade. Illegal drugs and violence are linked primarily through drug
marketing: disputes among rival distributors, arguments and robberies
involving buyers and sellers, property crimes committed to raise drug
money. Drug prohibition causes so much needless crime that we could
eliminate 85 percent of all burglary and street crime overnight by ending
drug prohibition.

It's worth remembering that no one was robbing, whoring and murdering over
drugs when addicts could buy all of the heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium
and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy.
When drugs were legal, addicts held regular employment, raised decent
families and were indistinguishable from their teetotaling neighbors.
Overdoses were virtually unheard of when addicts used cheap pure Bayer
Heroin instead of the expensive toxic potions prohibition puts on the streets.

The crime, disease and death associated with "drugs" are the result of a
prohibition scheme that has never worked for anything, anywhere, anytime.

Redford Given

San Francisco