Pubdate: Fri, 22 Sep 2006
Source: Peoria Journal Star (IL)
Copyright: 2006sPeoria Journal Star
Contact:  http://pjstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/338
Note: Does not publish letters from outside our circulation area.
Author: Greg James
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

TAKING PROFIT OUT OF DRUG WAR WILL EASE CRIME

This year, Peoria has 11 homicides and counting. A Sept. 18 headline 
reads, "Drive-by shooting wounds 2 boys."

How many people will be killed and how many families will be ruined 
before the government gives up on Prohibition, Part II? The drug war 
spawns crime and gives money to gangs and terrorists who harm our 
country and wreak havoc in our streets.

The local and national governments will just say we need to get 
tougher. How long have we heard that? Do we really think it will 
work? Drugs are bad - all of them, cigarettes and alcohol, too - but 
the effects of prohibition are worse.

This war on our streets will never end until people demand that the 
government end it by taking the obscene profit out of illegal drugs. 
Nevada residents will vote in November on legalizing marijuana and 
taxing it at $40 per ounce.

In a free country, people have the right to peacefully use drugs and 
to provide them to those who want them. Some may not approve of their 
choices, but to interfere coercively with them is actually a 
violation of their rightful liberty. Should we make alcohol illegal 
and introduce that market to the gangbangers, too?

Go to city councils and other elected officials and demand public, 
two-sided debates about legalization, not just more tough talk.

Greg James

Dunlap
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman