APPRECIATION

Dear Editor:
Thank you for showing the guts to print the truth.

I have never seen so much common sense in one newspaper until I saw
M.L. Simon in your paper. Please continue.

Dave Michon

PROHIBITION & MURDER RATE

Dear Editor:

Every time there is a serious supply disruption in the supply of drugs
to Rockford, the murder rate goes up. When the FBI a few years back
did a sweep of a lot of the big dealers in town and sent them to
prison, they or the local police predicted that the murder rate would
go up due to the readjustment of suppliers.

And it did. Now we have another huge disruption caused by the border
crack down after 9/11. And guess what the murder rate has gone through
the roof. All this is prohibition related.

Gangs are fighting over the profits just as they did in the 1920s
during another prohibition. If the 1920s plus the 1990s teaches one
thing, it is this: "It's not the drugs stupid, its the
prohibition."

If we are tired of this murder roller coaster, we should kick our
addiction to prohibition.

M. Simon

WHAT ABOUT CAFFEINE?

Dear Editor:

Major kudos to M. L. Simon for another outstanding OPED: "DRUG
RELATED" (2-13-02). Almost all of our so-called drug-related crime is
actually drug prohibition-caused crime.

At the turn of the last century, there was no such thing as
"drug-related" crime.

That's because Bayer heroin was legally available at local pharmacies
for about the same price as Bayer aspirin. Also Coca-Cola contained
cocaine instead of caffeine and sold for 5 cents a bottle.

Today, caffeine addicts don't have to rob, steal or prostitute
themselves to buy a Coke, Pepsi or cup of coffee.

That's because their drug of choice, caffeine, is legal.

If caffeine were prohibited, the situation would be just like it is
today with other prohibited substances.

A black market would soon develop in caffeine, and caffeine products
would be sold only by criminals.

The price of caffeine products would skyrocket. Actually, it makes
more since to prohibit caffeine rather than marijuana because there is
a lethal dosage for caffeine, but not for marijuana. But prohibition
doesn't work except to assure the full employment of those doing the
prohibiting. If prohibition worked, tobacco should be the first
substance prohibited and alcohol the second.

But prohibition doesn't work, and it never will.

Kirk Muse,

Mesa, Ariz.

PROHIBITION IS THE PROBLEM

Dear Editor:

For the most part, all of the problems you describe are prohibition
problems, not drug problems.

You titled the article incorrectly (Drug Related). It should be titled
"Prohibition Related". The institution that makes drugs and dealers
and terrorists dangerous and violent and rich is the drug war. It is
prohibition that allows these "dangerous" dealers and terrorists to
exist in the first place.

After all, the government has declared war on them, their black market
businesses and their black market goods.

If the government wants a war, they've sure got one. One thing is
going to separate the dealers from their huge black market profits--and
it isn't the government's war--it is decriminalization, legalization,
regulation and an end to the government's domestic war on citizens.
Drug dealers, terrorists, warlords, kingpins and guerillas fear only
one thing. They don't fear the DEA, CIA, FBI, any other law
enforcement or politicians or armies because they either already own
them or have them outgunned. The one thing they do fear is
legalization and regulation.

Truth to tell, the government rarely lists victory as an objective in
their expensive and oppressive trillion-dollar war. When they do spout
their "zero tolerance/total victory" rhetoric, how many of your
readers actually believe them? How many actually believe that this
year's multi-billion-dollar drug war budget will be the one that will
achieve total victory after decades of billion dollar budgets have
totally failed?

Maybe the corrupt politicians and media are required to adhere to the
party line of prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison
and military industrial complex, the drug testing industry, the "drug
treatment" industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the
politicians themselves, et al., can't live without the budget
justification, not to mention the invisible profits, bribery,
corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them. The
drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist enforcement
policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties that are
supposed to be inalienable according to the Constitution and Bill of
Rights.

Myron Von Hollingsworth,

Fort Worth, Texas

TEENAGERS NOT `TERRORISTS'

Dear Editor,

The "narco-terrorists" have finally hit American shores, only they
were here all along; in fact, they turned out to be America's children.

A teenager smoking marijuana is now a terrorist or traitor to his or
her country, at least according to President Bush's Office of National
Drug Control Policy, and the ads that aired during the Super Bowl, and
were followed by print ads in newspapers across the country.

It is preposterous to insinuate that teenagers or anyone else who
smokes marijuana is somehow a terrorist or traitor.

The idea is based on the precept that drugs finance terrorist
organizations, when, in reality, it is the prohibition of drugs that
make the market in drugs so lucrative and therefore attractive to
criminals and terrorists. Alcohol, a drug by any other name, does not
fund terrorists because it is not illegal.

When it was illegal, the proceeds funded all sorts of "terrorism" or
in the vernacular of the time period, "gangsterism."

So, if you were drinking a "Bud" during the game, you were a patriot,
but if you were smoking a "bud," you were suddenly a traitor.

And if your kids or their friends were "helping to murder a family in
Colombia", it is because we have allowed corrupt, ignorant and
fanatical people to wage war on substances, behavior, minorities, and
the Constitution.

We have allowed shysters, crooks and quacks to rob this nation of $300
billion over the last 60 years to "eliminate drugs" and "protect the
children," and all it has done is enrich criminals, terrorists and
dictators in foreign lands while creating crime and violence on our
own streets. We traded schools for prisons, and teachers for police;
we traded compassion for punishment and treatment for incarceration;
we traded the truth for lies.

Our children may be a lot of things: they may be lonely, scared or
confused, they may be rebellious, defiant or depressed, they may be
spoiled, arrogant, or just out to have a little fun, but they are not
terrorists or traitors.

They are not our enemy, they are our children. What kind of people
could lay blame upon the most innocent among us, for the most hideous
of crimes, and why do we let them get away with it?

Jim White,

Oregon, Ohio