Pubdate: Sun, 08 May 2011
Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA)
Copyright: 2011 Chico Enterprise-Record
Contact:  http://www.chicoer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/861
Note: Letters from newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority
Author: Garry Cooper

TRY NEW STRATEGY IN WAR ON DRUGS

We absolutely must refuse to listen to the specious arguments from the
law enforcement/prison industry on how they are the answer to the drug
problem in our country. After all, if they were the solution, don't
you think that with the trillions they have spent since the 1960s that
we would see some results other than a huge prison bureaucracy robbing
our schools of education and after school sports monies, further
exacerbating the problem? The proof is in the pudding.

The answer is simple but the solution is nearly impossible when the
politicians must prostitute themselves to the prison industry in order
to get elected and mindless fools fall for their propaganda.

We can solve most of the issues related to drug abuse with one simple
policy change. All drugs should be distributed legally to the users so
that the black market for them is wiped out overnight.

The gangs in our cities that recruit our young as well as the Mexican
cartels that have killed nearly as many souls on our border in the
last five years as we lost in the entire Vietnam War would lose 100
percent of their funding and collapse. The users would get a little
love in the form of information and counseling when they dropped in
and treatment when they wanted it, all funded by the massive savings
from ceasing to lock up innocent people. Einstein said the definition
of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting
different results.

Garry Cooper, Durham 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake