Source: Evening News (Norwich UK) Contact: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 Author: Alan Mason AMERICA'S FINAL SOLUTION TO THE DRUG PROBLEM JAMES Sandham (August 20) has clearly hit upon the right plant to deal with England's drug problem. One need only to look to the United States to realise how effective this plan would be. Admittedly, we have not yet totally solved our drug problem here in the US, but a final solution is near at hand. One must keep in mind that we only have about 1.7 million people in prison, of which only around half are there for drug-related crime, and a mere 3.9 million on parole or probation. While we do have one of the largest per capita prison populations in the free world, the fact that drugs are as freely available as ever shows that we still have a way to go. Fortunately, our tireless government officials are well aware that sacrifices must be made, and have wisely chosen to cut funding for the less essential programmes such as education in order to build dozens more much needed prisons. Perhaps the only thing Mr Sandham left out was a suggestion to relocate the population of Ireland and build electric fences and guard towers around the entire island so that it can be used as a prison. This will surely be needed once it is realised that alcohol is also a recreational drug, and millions of pub owners and customers are brought to justice and imprisoned. We in the US are not so lucky as to have such an ideal place to house our prisoners, but there are rumours that a deal to purchase Greenland is being negotiated. Alan Mason Aguanga California United States - --- Checked-by: Patrick Henry