WAR AGAINST DRUGS YIELDS ONLY HARM

Doug Clark asserts, "Someone would have to decide which drugs would be
legal" and, "Don't suggest we just surrender the war on drugs unless you
also explain exactly what we should do in its place" ("We'll never make
drugs legal," Oct. 23). In its place, America must legalize cannabis at the
very least. By re-legalizing cannabis, we bring rationality, integrity and
credibility to the laws, which will in turn invite more Americans to join
such a war on some drugs.

Most intelligent people in 2001 know it is ignorant to cage a human for
using cannabis. There will never be enough room in this newspaper to
properly address the prohibitionist, yet those who vote to cage a human for
using cannabis are the problem in society, not cannabis.

In its place, America's war on drugs would no longer finance terrorism. In
its place, drug police would be used to protect Americans from terrorism.
In its place, we would end the policy of denying education grant money to
those caught smoking a joint, yet allowing rapists and murderers those
privileges. In its place, we would stop killing people in Colombia for
growing some plants. In its place, we would allow farmers to grow it for
over a thousand ecological uses, and we would not arrest sick Americans who
wish to use cannabis to relieve pain from AIDS, cancer and other ailments.
In its place, America can never do so badly in keeping children off drugs
as it does today. In its place, people would use cannabis at the altar, as
has been the practice since before the beginning of written history, which
our country based on religious freedom does not allow.

Thank God for cannabis. Accept cannabis (also known as kaneh bosm, before
the King James Version) for what it is as described on the very first page
of the Bible (Genesis 1:11-12 and 29-30). If God gave us cannabis, who
gives us cannabis prohibition?

We need rationality in America's drug problems, and hitting your head
against the wall over and over and expecting different results is dumb.
Help end the war, not escalate it.

Stan White
Dillon, Colo.

I suppose people like Doug Clark never would have legalized alcohol.
Moralistic do-gooders are all the same. Freedom is always too complicated,
and repression is always the answer.

Dan Scupin
Destin, Fla.

Doug Clark doesn't attempt a "moral argument" for drug prohibition because
there is no morality in a policy that causes a hundred times the troubles
that the drugs do. Clark's support for America's lunatic drug war ignores
the critical fact that drug prohibition is the direct cause of the "drug
problems" he cites as reasons to continue a failed policy.

The gospel truth that drug crusaders like Clark sweep under the rug is the
historic reality that no one was robbing, whoring and murdering over drugs
when addicts could buy all of the heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium and
anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy.
Before America outlawed drugs, there was no such thing as drug crime. All
of the crime, death, disease and social disruption caused by drugs is
actually the result of a brain-dead prohibition policy that already caused
an enormous catastrophe with alcohol prohibition.

When drugs were legal, addicts held regular employment, raised decent
families and were indistinguishable from their teetotaling neighbors (like
many tobacco addicts today). All of the social devastation caused by drugs
comes from a false policy because drug addicts can function at high levels
when they have access to cheap, pure drugs.

Overdoses were virtually unheard of when addicts used cheap, pure heroin
instead of the expensive toxic potions prohibition puts on the streets.

The answer to Clark's illiterate question, "How can we legalize drugs?" is
very simple. It's called regulation.

Clark complains about kiddie drug use, but it is the unregulated criminal
black market that prohibition keeps in business that refuses to check IDs.
Allowing criminals to control the drug industry is the prime cause of
nearly all drug problems, and we can end our drug troubles by ending the
drug laws and regulating adult use of drugs.

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 it will work for drugs.

Redford Givens
San Francisco, Calif.

I am a little disappointed by Doug Clark's column. The sentiments he
expressed seem to lack anything that might be termed as vision.

He said he believes it may be impossible to legalize currently prohibited
substances because no one would take on that liability. "Think of the
lawsuits for selling addictive substances that, when consumed in excessive
amounts, can kill outright, and that frequently lead users on a path of
self-destruction," he wrote.

Alcohol is an addictive substance that can kill outright, and that
certainly leads users on a path of self-destruction. It was once
prohibited. It has since been legalized. Americans of that time, such as
the members of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform,
recognized that prohibition was making matters worse. They witnessed the
rise of gangsters, the proliferation of alcohol among minors, and the
transformation of beer drinkers to consumers of hard liquor. (Hard liquor
has more alcohol per volume and a higher profit margin, making it
preferable to smugglers.)

They said "enough." Alcohol prohibition ended. Today, we enforce an age
restriction. Kids can now buy illegal substances more easily than beer.
They certainly don't have to travel as far. They can get those substances
in any high school or junior high school in the country - you know, the
places we like to call "drug-free zones."

Paul Miller
Woodbridge, Va.