GOVERNMENT IS WAGING DRUG PERSECUTION

I am writing in response to your Feb. 9 story, "Drug Offender May Lose His
House," reporting the efforts of an Ohio prosecutor to seize a man's house.

What is wrong with you? Don't you understand that by publishing uncritical
drug bust news stories such as this, you are implying that it's OK for the
government to carry on with its brutal Hitler-like drug war pogrom designed
to distract our attention from more important issues by ruining the lives
of the few who ingest or sell certain drugs?

Surely you wouldn't be so nonchalant if the cops simply lined up these
people against a wall and shot them, so why do you suspend judgment when
innocent people are (merely?) jailed or otherwise punished? Would you have
been silent about Hitler's policies if he had imprisoned Jews rather than
slaughtering them?

First, banning a drug harms users (adulterated drugs and jail time) and
nonusers (murder and mayhem on our streets) much more than if the drug were
freely and legally available. Second, if that were the reason, why didn't
we ban alcohol and tobacco, too?

Hitler's armies may have lost the war but his ideas seem to have found
acceptance in the news-rooms of the Land of the Free.

Alan Randell Victoria, British Columbia