WAR ON DRUGS IS NOT OUTSIDE OUR BORDERS

"War Dragnet Nets Drugs" (editorial, Dec. 21) celebrates the shotgun
wedding of the war against terrorism and the war on drugs, suggesting
they are one in the same, and that increased military and police
efforts at our borders will bring us victory in both.

The war against terrorism has foreign enemies as clearly defined as
those we defeated in WWII. With smart policies and the coordinated
cooperation of most of the world's sovereign nations we can
realistically expect significant reduction in acts of terror. But the
enemies of the war on drugs are overwhelmingly our own sons and
daughters, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and neighbors.
The United States (not Russia or China) is now the world's leader in
prisoners, with about 2,300,000 children, women, and men behind bars.

An enormous percentage of these prisoners are nonviolent addicts, who
will return to our communities with worse addictions than they had
before. The suggestion that the US can effectively seal its borders
from drug imports is nonsense. Can we stop drugs at our borders? The
simple historical and economic answer is no.

Robert Merkin,
Northampton, Mass.