REGULATE, CONTROL, TAX

To the editor:

As a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and a former
federal law enforcement officer working out of the Weymouth area, I
feel compelled to respond to one time DARE officer Jim Bowden
(Marijuana is Addictive. Dec 21). I've no doubt Officer Jim is
sincere. Sincerity does not make him any less wrong..

My own experience on the front lines of the War on Drugs, Inc
included a stint keeping America safe from contraband as a Coast
Guard petty officer stationed at Point Allerton in Hull, less than 15
miles from Weymouth. I am a proud graduate of the USCG's Law
Enforcement Academy and participated in several high profile drug
interdiction cases off the Massachusetts coast in the early '80's.
Even then I was struck by the futility of it all. For every boat I
would board and search, literally hundreds more would pass by. In a
nation of free citizens, there simply is no way for law enforcement
to intercept even a small fraction of the illegal substances coming
into our country.

Drug abuse is harmful to individuals and society. That's true enough.
So does that mean massive expenditures on overwhelming law
enforcement is the best way to keep us safe? Or is treating substance
abuse as a public health issue and putting our resources into
education, prevention and treatment a more effective way of dealing
with the problem?

Dramatic reductions in the rates of tobacco use and addiction over
the past 20 years with very few tobacco criminals having to go to
jail would seem to support the latter.

Alcohol Prohibition was abandoned as a dismal failure. Few credible
authorities advocate blanket prohibitions on tobacco because they
know that to do so would throw the door wide open to the rise of
tobacco lords and tobacco gangs. Prohibition places dangerous
substances completely outside the oversight of legitimate authority.
The majority of today's drug crisis is directly attributable to the
consequences of Prohibition rather than actual use of the substances.
Only legal products can be regulated, controlled and kept out of the
hands of children.

Substance abuse is a serious problem that demands serious solutions.
Officer Jim's exhortation to youth not to use drugs, and to stop if
they already are, amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking. If
that's all it took we would have achieved the utopian dream of a Drug
Free America decades ago.

Regulate, tax, control. There is a better way.

Greg Francisco

Paw Paw, MI