Pubdate: Sat, 20 Nov 1999
Date: 11/20/1999
Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (WA)
Author: Jim Satcher, Mount Vernon
Related:  http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99.n1241.a02.html

This is in response to Gil Puder's Nov. 7 article "Shifting the
Battleground." Puder painted an honest but gutsy portrait of this
country's drug problems.

By legalizing drugs, tens of billions of dollars that now go to
illegal drug suppliers each year could be redirected back into the
economy to be taxed and to pay for drug treatment, education and the
production of lower-cost but safer drugs than those found on the
street. Streets could become safer as the profit motive to sell
illegal drugs is removed. Countries that have adapted similar programs
find drug addicts no longer have to steal to pay for their habit and
that many live like any other person with a job, a home,
responsibilities and the like.

The backside to legalizing drugs is that thousands of federal, state
and local law enforcement officers hired to fight drugs may lose their
jobs. Law enforcement no doubt will fight to keep their jobs and by
doing so they will become strange bedfellows with the crime syndicates
who will want to keep drugs on the street because it is their most
profitable enterprise.

Like the Roaring '20s when booze was illegal, we are kept informed
about drug-related shootings, police raids, gang wars and the like,
but what are the health and economic costs of drug addiction?

If we take away the billions spent to finance the war on drugs we may
find it pales in comparison to the health costs and economic loss
brought about by addiction to legal drugs alcohol and tobacco.

Law enforcement says we are winning the war on drugs, but Puder says
we are not. Whom do we believe?

Maybe we should be asking kids because to some, DARE means Drugs Are
Really Excellent.

Jim Satcher,
Mount Vernon