LINKING WAR ON DRUGS TO WAR ON TERROR

The Office of National Drug Control Policy, through its ads televised
during the Super Bowl [and in The Times, Page A15, Feb. 4], would
have us believe that those who consume prohibited drugs are in effect
supporting terrorists. This is simply typical drug-war-speak,
rhetoric designed to emotionally rally support for escalation of the
unwinnable war on noncorporate drugs.

In tying drug-trade profits to terrorism this government agency
clearly shows us why the drug war and prohibitions should end.
Clearly, the more successful the efforts are in interrupting drug
flow, the higher the profits become for those involved. The drug war
thusly serves as a protection racket for those high profits. It's the
ONDCP, our national drug policy and drug prohibition that have made
simple garden products more valuable than gold and handed terrorists
a means to support their activities on a silver platter.

The yet-to-be-learned lesson of the drug war is that good intentions
can become liberty-consuming bureaucracies creating their own reasons
to exist and expand with time. Let's all pray the war on terrorism (a
response to administer justice for the crimes of Sept. 11) does not
become a similar institution.

Richard L. Root,

Westminster

I find the recent television and print ads linking drug use and
terrorism to be very disturbing. Although it is not unlikely that
some drug money does get funneled to terrorist organizations, the
sole reason for this is the current state of prohibition. Just as
alcohol prohibition fueled organized crime back in the 1920s, the war
on drugs fuels crime today. In 1929, when President Hoover appointed
a commission to study the overwhelming disobedience to Prohibition,
that commission concluded that Prohibition was unenforceable. Nothing
has changed since then.

Jerry Parsons,

Long Beach

So now the U.S. government thinks it's OK to blame drug users for the
terrorist attacks. "I helped blow up buildings," said one young man
in the commercial aired during the Super Bowl. Both spurious and
sensationalist, this is the most offensive propaganda yet to come out
of our futile war on drugs. Our drug money supports terrorism, but
our oil money doesn't? When will we see the president and vice
president in a commercial saying, "I helped blow up buildings"?

David Spancer,

Eagle Rock