Pubdate: Mon, 9 August 1999
Source: Daily Texan (TX)
Contact:  http://stumedia.tsp.utexas.edu/webtexan/
Author: Jeff Burke, UT staff

THAT DOG DON'T HUNT

The Drug Czar says that only 6 percent of Americans use illegal drugs. Can
anyone count the billions of dollars that have been spent in our countrys'
'War on drugs". I remember when Nixon inaugurated his Operation Intercept in
1969, which was supposed to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S.
from Mexico and points south. Thirty years later, they are still singing the
same song, but have changed the title to protect the inept and their dismal
failures. That dog don't hunt! Prohibition didn't work with alcohol, it
didn't work with drugs and it won't work with guns. There will always be a
black market -- the laws of supply and demand (which obviously operate on a
higher level than the rhetoric of politicians) dictate this uncontrovertable
fact of nature. If these substances were legalized (like in
Amsterdam/Holland) then those addicted could safely and cheaply attend to
their disorders without resorting to crime, and we could allow those tens of
thousands incarcerated for victimless crimes to attempt to lead more
productive lives -- not to mention saving the taxpayers money for building
all those new prisons. Passing more prohibitive laws only makes more work
for our already overworked Law Enforcement Agencies, and makes drug dealers
and their cartels more rich and more powerful. Perhaps in the future they
will be the most powerful military/economic force in the world. Does that
sound like a world any of us want to live in.

Jeff Burke, UT staff

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