Pubdate: Fri, 17 May 2013
Source: Record, The (Hackensack, NJ)
Contact:  2013 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
Website: http://www.northjersey.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/44
Author: Brande Jeffs

DRUG PROHIBITION IS THE PROBLEM

Regarding "Suburbia's deadly secret" (Page A-1, May 5):

How many more young adults and kids must die before we relearn the 
lesson that our nation painfully learned between 1920 and 1933? 
Prohibition doesn't work, it can't work and it will never work.

The suffering families and addicts who wrote in response to your 
series need only to connect the dots to reveal a straight line 
between prohibition and their drug addiction plight: prohibition 
equals profit incentive equals supply equals addiction equals death.

Alcohol prohibition created organized crime. Today, we have drug 
lords and kingpins across the land. Jailing them creates a vacancy 
for the next bad guy, and the position is instantly filled. It's too 
lucrative to leave unattended.

There is an organization made up of cops, prosecutors and judges, 
both active and retired, called LEAP, Law Enforcement Against 
Prohibition. The name says what they advocate: legalize and regulate.

Ending prohibition would also legalize Ibogaine, a "cure" for 
addiction that is also outlawed under our prohibition system. It's 
legal everywhere else on the planet, with the singular exception of 
Belgium. Do your own research and you'll spend your rehab money at an 
Ibogaine clinic in Canada or Mexico or Europe. I did.

Native remedies from other cultures are dismissed by us in favor of 
corporate pharmaceuticals, and that is our great loss, but Ibogaine 
is not hocus-pocus, and it saves lives.

Only when this proven failure - prohibition - is consigned to the 
trash can, where it belongs, can the tragic, needless loss of lives 
be ended and the letters from sufferers cease.

Brande Jeffs

Maywood, May 14
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom