DRUG LAWS CONTRIBUTE TO POLICE CORRUPTION

I can't help wondering if Sheriff Hege, in a misguided act of faith,
pretended it could not happen on his watch or just looked the other way. He
must have known that the statistics for drug malfeasance in public office,
especially among police, are staggering. Every day a new case appears
somewhere in our country. This commonplace situation has nothing to do with
drugs but everything to do with prohibition. Prohibition is nothing less
than price support for drug dealers. It is the engine that drives a cheap
weed to prices beyond gold.

The inflated price of all illicit drugs creates a situation where the
desire to share in this financial bonanza has made criminals of honest men
and women. In the year just past, ministers have been caught dealing drugs
from their pulpits, judges selling dope from the bench, FBI men and DEA
agents involved in drug rings and umpteen federal border guards caught
keeping our Mexican border porous for South American drug lords. In brief,
hundreds of those sworn to protect and defend have been caught, tried and
convicted for violating the law that makes prohibition a way of life in our
country.

I find it hard to condemn the actions of those officers just trying to make
a buck, but I do condemn those politicians who insist that national
prohibition of drugs is the only way to go. They know better. Worse still
are the other politicians waiting in the wings to harpoon any elected
official willing to say aloud what every knowledgeable person in the
country already knows: Prohibition and the drug war fought in its name are
miserable flops. We must end them before more policemen are jailed,

Joseph E. Hopwood

Quantico, MD