Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)
Contact:  http://www.examiner.com/
Pubdate: Wed, 08 Apr 1998

WAR AGAINST DRUGS, RELATIONS WITH MEXICO AND LIFE IN U.S.

In your editorial ( "Patching an anti-drug alliance," April 3), you wrote
of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's effort to deny Mexico certification as being
fully cooperative with our government's attempt to stem the flow of illegal
drugs.

Should she take the time to investigate, she would learn, among other
things, that the money paid in bribes to law enforcement officials is twice
the entire budget of the Mexican attorney general's office. Those top
officials who are in a position to be effective usually have to choose
between being paid off or killed off.

Mexico is helping all it can and paying a terrible price for trying.

The destruction of civil order at the border is caused - you called it
correctly - by the demand for drugs in the streets of America. Economic
demand moves goods and services.

How do we reduce demand?

One way is to make drug users unemployable through mandatory drug testing.
Another way is to jail as many drug users as possible. For whom are all
those new prison cells being built?

The drug war front is here at home. Its conduct requires us all to face the
political question of how much personal and economic freedom we are willing
to cede to the moral police in order to reduce demand for illegal drugs to
near zero. And were the zero demand circumstance to eventuate, would you
want to live here?

Gerald M. Sutliff, Emeryville