U.S. FAILURES CONTRIBUTE TO TERRORISM

Your Feb. 5 editorial about how buying illegal drugs contributes to
terrorism and the Colombian mafia: Any young person (the target of the
Super Bowl ads you touted) with two brain cells to rub together can see the
obvious flaw in this argument. If drugs weren't illegal, people could grow
them in their back yards and thus cut out black market criminals altogether.

So what exactly is contributing to terrorism? Could it be the U.S. failure
of a drug war? Besides that, are they going to make any ads pointing out
the myriad ways average, non-drug-using Americans contribute to world
instability and terrorism by our chronic overuse of fossil fuels, a myopic
indifference to the consequences of unregulated world trade, and our
self-defeating over reliance on militarism? Gee, then those statements in
the ad would apply to nearly everyone, old and young alike!

Guess we all "helped kids learn how to kill... helped put human beings into
slavery... helped kill a judge... and helped blow up buildings." You're
right. That is pretty horrible. But it wouldn't be a very popular Super
Bowl ad.

HEIDI BAKK-HANSEN, DULUTH