Pubdate: Sun, 05 Aug 2001
Source: Tampa Tribune (FL)
Copyright: 2001, The Tribune Co.
Contact:  http://www.tampatrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/446
Author:   Sydney K. Potter, Tampa

TREAT USERS; DIMINISH MARKET

Are we ever going to see an end to this idiotic "war on
drugs"?

Apparently not - not so long as those in charge refuse to recognize
that prohibition doesn't work, never has worked, and never will work -
not unless we want to turn ourselves into a dictatorship. That
probably wouldn't work, either, human nature being what it is.

Now the Port of Tampa, at the behest of Jeb Bush and his Republican
Legislature, is preparing to spend $15 million - which it doesn't have
but which no doubt can be extracted from the taxpayers - for miles of
barbed-wire fencing, dozens of closed-circuit video cameras and a
massive entrance check-point ($6 million), to double the security
force and to fingerprint employees and check their
backgrounds.

Florida has more than 8,000 miles of shoreline, mostly unprotected.
Are we to look forward to the entire coastline being surrounded?

Our prisons are crammed with drug offenders, mostly users and small-
time operators, but the drug traffic continues. Enforcement officers
spend their time and our money looking for marijuana and abusing
private citizens suspected of drug activity, and major-domos of the
drug war brag about seizing tons of cocaine worth umpteen millions of
dollars, even as more tons pour into the country quite beyond their
ability to stop it.

While we continue to make drug trafficking the most profitable and
most horrendous criminal activity on earth, education and treatment
remain largely ignored. Has there ever been a really comprehensive
study to determine why people use drugs and what can be done to
diminish the market? So long as the market remains and we continue to
make it so profitable, the traffic will continue. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake