Ma'am;...For every million, or so people asking yes, or no, there is always a few asking why... Happy people don't take drugs... Drugs don't make people happy, but unhappy people take drugs.... Instead of asking what we can do to stop people from escaping reality, or if we should ; why not ask why so many people are engaged in escape... The world belongs to the law makers, the police, the judges, the wardens, the businessmen and bureaucrats, and they have their escape... Sex and power and wealth and religion are escapes, and so is violence, or the killing of endangered species; but what if your escape is something others feel they need escape from??? What if what you do for your escape demeans people beyond the point where they need escape, from self, or from reality... I think drug use and escape across the board says that we are living in a failed society so that we can only call it living, and which many risk death to escape... Because so few people realize what they are dealing with, they instead deal with their pain and frustration... And the cost is extreme... Legal drugs have a terrible cost for health care... Illegal drugs account for a great proportion of the people in prison, and law enforcement is the biggest part of many budgets... If illegal drugs result in crime then that is an issue that can be dealt with on its own; but absolutly nothing except awareness of the total problem we face in society, of meaning being taken from our lives with our power and authority and wealth will bring us to reconciliation... To use or to not use drugs, or to legalize or not legalize drugs is the wrong question... We need to ask what it is about our society that drives so many to seek escape...I think if you will go to church, or dope yourselves with drugs you will not demand or defend your human rights, and you will not ask for your due, and you would more justly be rewarded by the wealthy and powerful than insulted by them, for you are their slave, and you make their escape from reality complete...Thanks...Sweeney

Mr. Sweeney: Your customary rambling rant has almost nothing to do with the subject of drugs, licit or illicit. Furthermore, you are simply wrong in your assumption that "happy people don't take drugs." The desire to alter one's mental state through the use of chemical substances, whether for spiritual, medicinal or recreational purposes, is as old as mankind itself. There are millions of people who drink alcohol moderately and responsibly, or who occasionally smoke a joint, whose lives are contented and satisfied. They're not necessarily trying to "escape" from anything, any more than the person who goes to a movie or visits an amusement park is trying to escape. The simple fact is that the results of drug prohibition are worse than the effects of the drugs themselves. ALL voluntary transactions between adults should be legal, whether they involve drugs, gambling, prostitution, or any other so-called vice. No one should be penalized for having a different taste in intoxicants.

Finally, someone has had the guts to suggest that drugs should be legalized. Froma Harrop has stated in her recent article everything I've been saying for years. We are keeping thugs and terrorists in business by our drug laws and our law enforcement, and our constantly growing prison population is costing the tax payers billions. Each time I've spoken to friends and business associates about the self-perpetuating crime brought on by these drug laws, I've been met with the same responses, "Then more people would take drugs". That is nonsense! There would be less drug pushers, less crimes involving theft for drug money, less deaths due to overdose which we should all know is usually caused, not by taking too many drugs but by ingesting the poisonous additives used by drug dealers. I could go on but Froma has said it all. I congratulate her and suggest that her article hit all the other newspapers and TV documentaries. The country needs to hear this and to wake up to reality.
Thank you Froma!
Peggy

Hurray for Froma on this one! Peggy's comments I second. However, we can go back to such an unlikely source as William Buckley, Jr., the arch conservative who called for decriminalization of drugs years ago. We could build hospitals for addicts (there will always be the addictive personality) instead of jails and have billions left over to tackle the poverty problem. Taxing the marijuana cigarettes could put the federal budget in balance. Perhaps this would answer Sweeney's problem, although I had difficulty understanding what he was getting at.
Anyway, congratulations for bringing to the public this problem. Arthur

This column of Froma's has made me a fan! With the experience of prohibition of alcohol behind us, the idea of prohibition of recreational drugs flies in the face of history.

The column about Prohibition's end appeared in our local paper this morning. Now I grew up under Prohibition and can say from experience that it was a horrible joke. The entertainment world of the time led us in making drinking fashionable, and the result was an expensive mistake in trying to enforce the law. I see the same thing today in regard to drugs, with the added horror of the corruption of officials, inter-gang wars and the buildup of a wealthy criminal class in Latin America as well as in the U.S.
I have written our local representatives in Washington-- the two who replied refuse to see the problem. Afraid of losing a few votes, I guess. Enforce our laws, they say. Well, I say "Hoorah for Froma Harrop's sensible exposure of the truth!" Now if we can get a few influential persons in government to espouse the cause of Repeal, as finally happened in the 1930's, perhaps it can be done again.