LETTERS

LIKE PROHIBITION,
THE DRUG WAR IS DOOMED TO FAIL

"We could have a virtually drug-free America in three or four years," according to Rep. Bill McCollum in his March 10 commentary, "Waving the white flag in drug war?" Mr. McCollum believes we should develop a strategy and apply whatever resources are necessary to win the drug war. Unfortunately, he offers nothing new.

Since the 1920s, the U.S. government has prohibited an array of ingestible substances, including alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD and many others. Though the government eventually saw the error of its ways and re-legalized alcohol, it can't seem to make the same connection with other illegal substances. All drugs were legal for most of our history and never were much of a public concern.

Only when the government took upon itself to decide what individuals may or may not put into their own bodies did we have mass arrests of otherwise law-abiding citizens, corruption and graft running rampant through all sectors of the government, overcrowded prisons and courts, an enormous number of rich and powerful criminal gangs and much more.

Government officials such as Mr. McCollum will never force America to be drug free - only less free. I am tired of hearing the same old plans I have heard for 30 years and statements about how we are winning the war when one party is in charge and losing the war when the other party is running the show. Please negotiate a surrender so we can live in peace, as this futile war is being fought in my neighborhood.

"Prohibition . . . goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. . . . A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded," Abraham Lincoln said.

I challenge Mr. McCollum to act more like an American congressman and less like a central-planning Soviet-style poli-bureaucrat.

Tomas R. Estrada-Palma,
Vice chairman
Virginia Libertarian Party
Woodbridge