Pubdate: Wed, 14 Feb 2001
Source: Capital Times, The  (WI)
Copyright: 2001 The Capital Times
Contact:  P.O. Box 8060 Madison, WI 53708
Fax: (608) 252-6445
Website: http://www.thecapitaltimes.com/
Author: Gary Storck
[In reply to http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n224/a01.html]

SHOULD COCAINE CARRY HARSHER PENALTY THAN BOOZE?

It was nice to see 13 year old Renee Frank is interested enough in 
the goings ons in Madison to write a letter to the editor Feb. 6, "Ax 
drug-using firefighters".

Unfortunately, despite the lack of DARE drug "misinformation" classes 
in Madison schools, she still has yet to grasp the larger forces at 
work here.

Her letter fails to mention if she has given any thought as to why 
the cocaine the firefighters used is illegal but the alcohol they 
consumed was not. Does she know that legal drugs like alcohol and 
tobacco and even prescription drugs kill hundreds of thousands per 
year, while cocaine deaths are estimated to be in the low hundreds, 
and marijuana has never caused a death by overdose?

Has she considered how she might feel if she were the child of one of 
the firefighters, or worse, of one of the Jocko's bartenders 
sentenced to mandatory minimums for the crime of supplying a demand 
little different from the one they normally engaged in, dispensing a 
drug, alcohol, to consenting adults? Would she feel that it was okay 
that her family was torn apart because a parent chose a safer illegal 
substance over a more dangerous and violence-inducing legal one?

Our nation's drug policies should reflect the actual harm potential 
of substances, not decades of lies that criminalize some drugs, yet 
allows more harmful ones to be marketed to the American public 
because the makers of those drugs have purchased the silence of the 
people we elect to represent us.

I hope that the writer will continue to study this problem. A good 
jumping off place is the website of The Media Awareness Project at 
www.mapinc.org.

The younger generation is inheriting the failed policies of their 
elders, and unless the nation adopts rational and humane drug 
policies based on truth, the days of America as even a nominally free 
country are limited.
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe