PROHIBITION WON'T WORK

Editor:
It's time for America to wake up to the fact that the criminal activities
among law enforcement officers in Davidson County is only the tip of the
iceberg of corruption caused by drug prohibition every year. In the past
five years, the number of police officers charged with serious crimes has
risen over 700 percent and in almost every instance drug war corruption is
involved.

During alcohol prohibition Al Capone boasted, "Half the cops in Chicago are
on my payroll." Nowadays, cops do not wait for bribes. Law enforcement
officers rob drug dealers of their cash, form partnerships with drug gangs
or go into the drug business distributing cocaine, marijuana and Ecstasy at
an alarming rate.

Our lunatic drug crusade is a bigger failure than alcohol prohibition was
in the 1920s and '30s. And for exactly the same reasons.

It's worth remembering that Eliot Ness and the revenuers never put the
booze barons out of business. Repeal and a regulated market for adult
alcohol use did that. Regulation works for alcohol and regulation will work
for drugs. Prohibition, on the other hand, has never worked for anything,
anywhere, anytime.

Redford Givens

San Francisco, Calif.