Pubdate: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI) Copyright: 2001 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Contact: http://www.jsonline.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/265 STOP USING SIMPLISTIC APPROACH TO VIOLENCE The Nov. 12 article "Children killed with guns a mind-numbing reality" dishonors the dead by grasping for the convenient scapegoat of drugs as the cause of violence. To speculate that if you could snap your fingers and eliminate drugs, the crime rate would drop by 70% to 80%, is unrealistic and misleading. The real culprit here is drug prohibition. The homicide rate today rivals that at the height of Prohibition. Eliminate the obscene profits to be gained by drug dealing, and you eliminate the violence associated with turf wars and drug deals gone sour. While we are engaged in wishful thinking that drugs or the drug war will simply vanish, why stop there? If we could just snap our fingers and eliminate guns, alcohol, poverty, unemployment, hunger, discrimination, educational disadvantages or injustice, wouldn't there be a general decline in violence, too? We need to take a cold, hard look at the war on drugs, the booming prison population, the increasing racial disparity in who goes to prison and the violence engendered by drug prohibition and shift the paradigm from the simplistic "blame it on drugs" approach to a comprehensive, sober, mature analysis of all of the factors contributing to violence in our city. Paul Mozina Milwaukee - --- MAP posted-by: Beth