Pubdate: Sat, 20 May 2000 Source: Daily Southtown (IL) Copyright: 2000 Daily Southtown Contact: 6901 W. 159th St., Tinley Park, IL 60477 Fax: (708) 633-5999 Website: http://www.dailysouthtown.com/ Author: Robert Sharpe DRUG WAR IN KOKOMO Apparently Kokomo, Ind., has a lot in common with Medellin, Colombia ("Small town drug turf wars," Daily Southtown, May 16). When obscene amounts of money are at stake criminals have been known to use violence as a means of securing market share. Yet it is not drugs that drive the killings so much as drug trade profits, estimated by the United Nations at $400 billion per year. These tremendous profits would not be possible if not for drug prohibition. As long as demand remains constant, police efforts to limit supply only make drug trafficking more profitable. Whenever drug law-related violence makes headlines the inevitable response from our leaders is more tax dollars spent on the War on Drugs, which then leads to increased profitability and increased violence and death. Until politicians from both parties recognize the parallels between the Drug War and our country's disastrous experiment with alcohol prohibition things will only get worse. That means more death, increased incidence of HIV for intravenous drug users and fewer civil rights for all Americans. When alcohol prohibition ended, liquor producers stopped killing each other, consumers stopped going blind from bathtub gin and minors had to show proof of age to buy alcohol. We could easily put an end to the violence and make it harder for American youth to purchase drugs by lifting drug prohibition. Of course, that might send children the wrong message. The only message I'm getting from Capitol Hill is that it's better to continue wasting billions of tax dollars a year on a counterproductive policy than to admit you've made a horrible mistake. Robert Sharpe Students for Sensible Drug Policy George Washington University Washington - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart