If the United States eliminated its hypocritical drug laws -- under which alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine are legal while pot, cocaine, and ecstasy are not -- defeating the IT infrastructures of Colombian drug cartels would be a nonissue ("The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.," July). Without the financial incentive our drug laws provide, Colombian drug traffickers would doubtless stop dismembering the bodies of their enemies with chain saws and move on to less destructive fields of activity (copying CDs, for example). The United States has spent billions to eliminate drug exports from Colombia, and as your article points out, cocaine shipments are almost twice what they were in 1998. Instead of endlessly playing catch-up against a force we'll never defeat, we must remember why we're in this situation in the first place.

W. Eric Martin

Blackstone, MA

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