Pubdate: Mon, 25 Feb 2002
Source: Florence Times Daily (AL)
Copyright: 2002 Times Daily
Contact:  http://www.timesdaily.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1641
Author: Redford Givens
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n265/a08.html

HASN'T WORKED YET

To the Editor:

"Jury finds man guilty in shooting." Has anyone in Tuscumbia ever stopped 
to think that Eric Moss's shooting and the hundreds of other injuries and 
murders related to drug dealing would never happen except that drugs are 
illegal? Moss's shooting was the result of greed, not drug intoxication. 
True "drug crimes" are rare since being high usually calms aggressive 
tendencies.

Colbert County District Attorney Alverson misleads the public when he 
implies that "drugs" are causing the problems created by America's lunatic 
drug crusade. Illegal drugs and violence are linked primarily through drug 
marketing: disputes among rival distributors, arguments and robberies 
involving buyers and sellers, property crimes committed to raise drug 
money. Drug prohibition causes so much needless crime that we could 
eliminate 85 percent of all burglary and street crime overnight by ending 
drug prohibition.

It's worth remembering that no one was robbing, whoring and murdering over 
drugs when addicts could buy all of the heroin, cocaine, morphine, opium 
and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. 
When drugs were legal, addicts held regular employment, raised decent 
families and were indistinguishable from their teetotaling neighbors. 
Overdoses were virtually unheard of when addicts used cheap pure Bayer 
Heroin instead of the expensive toxic potions prohibition puts on the streets.

The crime, disease and death associated with "drugs" are the result of a 
prohibition scheme that has never worked for anything, anywhere, anytime.

Redford Given

San Francisco 
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MAP posted-by: Beth