GET SMART ON CRIME

Editor -- Thank you for your intelligent article on the abysmal
failure on the war on drugs. It has always been amazing to me how the
public could permit itself to be led down this path or, indeed, any
of the brutal paths that Californians are willing to take to be ever
tougher on crime, not just for drugs, but for all offenses.

Most people still go along with harsher punishments for lesser and
lesser crimes because they blissfully assume these laws will never
affect them, and they are taught, via the media and the all pervasive
cop-and-robber shows, that there is a crook lurking under every bush
waiting to drag them to harm and to the dissecting table in a crime
lab as just another victim.

Little by little, however, I, as a school teacher encounter people
whose sons and daughters have run afoul of the law, and they begin to
see the monster that these draconian tough-on-crime laws have
created, and they are beginning to ask themselves if this is what
they wanted for their sons and daughters, their neighbors or themselves!

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1 in 20 Americans
spends some time in his/her life incarcerated, compared to Europe's 1
in 600. What's wrong with this picture? It is time to stop being
tough on crime, and wake up to being smart on crime. The
decriminalization of drugs is the best place to start.

Manuela Thiess

Monterey