NEW YORK - When I read the news that the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy "blasted the U.S.-led drug war as a failure that is pushing Latin American societies to the breaking point" (Wall Street Journal, Feb. 12), I thought: Someone is finally talking sense. I have long regarded the U.S. approach to drugs as self-righteous, overbearing and destructive.

This is not the first time the U.S. "war on drugs," which President Richard Nixon started back in 1971, has been pronounced a failure. Five years ago, for example, none other than President George W. Bush's "drug czar," John Walters, admitted that the "war" was failing. Of course, Walters, a hard-nosed conservative, made it clear that the U.S. had no intention of abandoning it. Today, he insists that intensified drug-related violence in Mexico - 4,000 people killed in 2008 alone - is a sign that the U.S. war is succeeding.

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