Pubdate: Wed, 05 Dec 2001
Source: Japan Times (Japan)
Copyright: 2001 The Japan Times
Contact:  http://www.japantimes.co.jp/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/755
Author: Mike Plylar

AMERICA'S DRUG WAR TRAGEDY

Many thanks to Hiroshi Ohta and Michael L. Lahr for exposing drug 
prohibition for what it is in their Nov. 22 article, "Protecting the public 
from the threats of terror and depression." The war on drugs is a clear and 
present danger to world civilization. In light of America's latest war and 
catastrophe, maybe it's long past the time for a closer examination of our 
past, current and future policies.

Can our countries afford the luxury of excessive, deadly and disastrous 
civil wars, such as the war on drugs, which devours fully 50 percent of the 
law enforcement resources in the United States, while terrorists, wishing 
us the gravest of harm, live, move and train right here among us?

Are our priorities skewed? Ask any postal worker if he or she would not 
feel relieved if the white powder leaking from an envelope on the sorting 
table turned out to be cocaine instead of some truly lethal biological 
agent. How would anyone feel? "Thank God it's only cocaine."

While Americans and our allies for decades have dedicated phenomenal 
amounts of the world's resources in the search for all manner of illegal 
plants, pills, powders and the like, our real enemies have literally 
invaded us. We all continue to pay the price of the U.S. government's drug 
war blunder, and that's the real world tragedy.

MIKE PLYLAR

Kremmling, Colorado
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