Drug supply and demand

I have maintained for years that America uses various Latin American
countries as excuses and scapegoats to justify spending untold dollars on
fighting the "War on Drugs," which is laughable, considering we could spend
a large portion of those dollars on prevention (Chronicle, Oct. 23,
"Zedillo blasts U.S. over drugs").

The bottom line is, if there is no demand, the supply will dwindle, and the
socalled drug exporters will have to grow something else. Why do we
continue to prop up government agencies and programs to fight something in
other countries when the problem resides here in ours?

It is easier to justify spending money on youth centers for inner cities,
employing people to run them, educating parents about educating their
children, giving children and adolescents goals and incentives, etc.,
rather than spending money to deploy military and paramilitary teams to
burn cocaine fields in Bolivia, Colombia and Peru.

And to blame Mexico, which suffers from multiple levels of corruption, for
not doing more to fight the "drug war" when we cannot even get our own
house in order is ludicrous.

Personally, I have spent time in Colombia and Mexico, and people who use
drugs in those countries are outcasts, a tiny minority. Here in the United
States, drug use is the hip thing to do in many societal circles. Hypocrisy
knows no bounds.

Denny W. Dial, Houston