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PLAN FOR COLOMBIA HAS NOT WORKED

Bravo to letter writer Noreen Ordronneau!

I submit the urgent question for policy makers should be, "Will criminal justice and DEA-style solutions reduce the amount of cocaine abuse in the United States?"

No matter how many hectares of Colombia, Bolivia or Peru the United States and paid contractors destroy with their aerial-dispersed poisons, not a single cocaine abuser in the United States is any closer to true recovery.  If equal priority is not given to reducing demand, cocaine importers will simply continue to score their product from the never-ending flow of coke smuggled from across South America.

It's time for more sensible alternatives.  We need to stop destroying other countries' agricultural infrastructure in the futile effort to "control" the multi-billion dollar cocaine industry.  Equally urgent, we need more funding of programs that provide treatment on demand for any drug abuser who wants it.  Such treatment should be available regardless of the drug of abuse -- whether that drug be cocaine, meth, alcohol, nicotine or opiates.

- -- Stephen Heath, Clearwater, Fla.