DRUG WAR BLUNDER

To the editor:

Thank you for pointing out the shortcomings of Robert Novak's bizarre
opinion in "Bad Combination" (Jan. 2).

In light of America's latest war and catastrophe, maybe a closer
examination of our past, current and future policies, both foreign and
domestic, is long overdue.

Can we afford the luxury of an excessive, deadly and disastrous civil war,
like the War on Drugs, which devours fully 50 percent of all our
law-enforcement resources -- while terrorists, wishing Americans the
gravest of harm, live, move and train right here among us?

Are our national priorities skewed? Ask any postal worker if the white
powder leaking from an envelope on their sorting table turns out to be
cocaine, instead of some truly lethal biological agent, would they feel
relieved? In their situation, how would you feel? Thank God it's only cocaine.

While Americans have chased each other for decades, dedicating phenomenal
amounts of our national assets, searching for all manner of illegal plants,
pills, powders and the like, our real enemies have literally invaded us. We
all continue to pay the price for our government's drug war blunder and
that's the real national tragedy.

MIKE PLYLAR

Kremmling, Colo.