TV AD HYPOCRISY

Editor -- It's interesting that after referring to our "failed" war
on drugs, The Chronicle should then agree with the lame-brained
premise advanced so expensively with our tax dollars on Super Bowl
Sunday: that purchasing illegal drugs supports terrorism (editorial,
"Your body, their profits," Feb. 6).

That logic ignores that the world's lucrative illicit drug markets
were created and are sustained by an ill-advised U.S. attempt to ban
them. Since the end of World War II those markets have prospered
almost in direct proportion to the money spent trying to suppress
them.

Money diverted into the drug markets has corrupted law enforcement
officials here at home and, in the case of smaller drug-producing
nations, has kept responsible government far beyond the reach of
impoverished peasant populations that grow drug crops. One has only
to review the recent history of Burma, Colombia and Afghanistan to
appreciate the dire international consequences of our domestic policy
failure.

That the TV ads should refer primarily to Afghanistan is especially
hypocritical. Not only does our drug policy play an important role in
sustaining that nation's heroin market -- our CIA directly helped
expand it during the '80s before the Russians were expelled.
Afterward, we helped Pakistan install the repressive Taliban as de
facto rulers.

TOM O'CONNELL,

San Mateo