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ILLEGAL DRUGS AND CRIME

Before seeking to expand a long-failed drug crusade with a new salvia divonorum ban, people like state Rep.  Charles "Doc" Anderson, R-Waco, should consider the results that America's war on drugs has produced in the last 94 years. 

When drug prohibition began, there was no such thing as a "drug crime." Addicts could buy morphine, heroin, cocaine and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy.  There was no need to rob, whore and murder to satisfy addictions. 

It is impossible to find any drug crimes in the historic record while drugs were legal.  All of the drug crimes, drug gangs and criminal drug activity are the result of a foolhardy prohibition policy.  Addicts worked regular jobs, raised decent families and were indistinguishable from their teetotaling neighbors before drug prohibition. 

Nowadays, 60 percent of the prison population is doing time for a victimless drug crime. 

Likewise, accidental overdoses were extremely rare when addicts used pure pharmaceutical drugs.  Almost every drug death before drug laws went on the books was a suicide done because of terminal health problems.  At present, experts say there are more than 20,000 accidental drug overdoses a year.  That's a lot of needless bloodshed to justify. 

Rep.  Anderson's self-serving politics ignores the counterproductive nature of a drug crusade that has caused a disaster where there was no problem. 

Ralph Givens

Daly City, Calif.