Pubdate: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW) Website: http://www.drugsense.org LETTER OF THE WEEK DRUG WAR HAS BEEN A FAILURE, SO IT'S TIME TO LEGALIZE THE STUFF By Michelle Cohen After nearly four decades of fueling the U.S. war on drugs with over a trillion tax dollars and 37 million arrests for nonviolent drug offenses, our confined population has quadrupled, making prison building the fastest growing industry in the United States. More than 2.2 million of our citizens are currently incarcerated, and every year we arrest an additional 1.9 million more, guaranteeing those prisons will be bursting at their seams. Every year we choose to continue this war will cost U.S. taxpayers another $69 billion. Despite all the lives we have destroyed and all the money so ill spent, today illicit drugs are cheaper, more potent and far easier to get than they were 35 years ago, at the beginning of the war on drugs. Meanwhile, people continue dying in our streets while drug barons and terrorists continue to grow richer than ever before. We would suggest that this scenario must be the very definition of a failed public policy. This madness must cease! We believe that to save lives and lower the rates of disease, crime and addiction, as well as to conserve tax dollars, we must end drug prohibition. LEAP [Law Enforcement Against Prohibition] believes that a system of regulation, and control of production and distribution, will be far more effective and ethical than one of prohibition. We do this in hopes that we in law enforcement can regain the public's respect and trust, which have been greatly diminished by our involvement in imposing drug prohibition. Michelle Cohen Schenectady The writer is a LEAP volunteer and criminal justice student at SCCC. Pubdate: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 Source: Daily Gazette (NY) - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake