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DRUG WAR WILL FAIL

I followed with interest your reporting on the recent drug raid on April 1.  Federal agents with helicopters, automatic weapons and stun grenades woke neighbors in the middle of the night.  No al-Qaida cell was captured in Baghdad, only five crack dealers in Carlisle.

The media love to call Iraq a quagmire, but never call the War on Drugs a lost cause.  This war has been going on since 1971 and I dare you to name one drug it has stopped.  What it has done is cost millions and utterly shredded our Bill of Rights.  Every year we are told we are winning and every year our courts and prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders along with no-knock raids and pretrial asset seizures.  Astronomical costs and no gain.

Prohibition didn't work and neither will the drug war.  Drugs won't go away until demand does.  Someone will always supply a demand.

A recent letter writer wants the government to do more to stop drugs.  Raising children is not the government's job.

I submit that parents need to show more interest in their own children and set examples.  Most parents before the 1960s managed to.  Drugs don't go looking for you -- you have to find them.

- -- Douglas R.  Fleck

Carlisle