Pubdate: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW) Website: http://www.drugsense.org LETTER OF THE WEEK PROHIBITION CREATES NEW PROBLEMS By Amy Rogers Re "It's time to seriously consider ending prohibition on drugs" (Viewpoints, April 5): Prohibition, whether of alcohol or the illegal drugs du jour, never works in the sense that it fails to eliminate the problem of drug abuse and addiction. What it does is create an entirely new set of problems and costs through supporting violent, organized crime, and the costs of incarceration and criminal justice. Which is more costly to society: a small percentage of legal drug addicts (who will probably be on welfare, but that's cheaper than jail), or financing the Taliban and gangs at home, destabilizing Mexican society by corrupting police forces, funding the FARC leftist rebels in Colombia and so many drug-related murders, gbnot to mention billions upon billions of dollars on interdiction and incarceration? It's not a question of whether drug use is bad. It's a practical question of how best to deal with the existence of addictive substances in the natural world. Amy Rogers Sacramento Pubdate: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 Source: Sacramento Bee (CA) Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09/n388/a05.html - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake