To the editor:

(Re: Schools program worthy of praise, Oct. 31)

It is tiresome to see the drug crusaders trying to justify their destructive inquisition with notions of “saving people from themselves.” The notion of a drug free America is pure madness and very harmful.

The claim that drug warriors are saving people by throwing them into prison is a huge lie. A lie so big that most people never question it. However, when we examine the results of drug prohibition we quickly learn that the drug crusade has failed on every front. Never since the drug laws went on the books has there been a reduction in drug use. In fact, we have more drug addicts now percentage wise than there were when the drug bans began.

A really good reason to end a futile drug war is the crime, disease and death it causes. There was no such thing as “drug crime” before drugs were prohibited.

Search the archives in vain seeking a theft, a robbery, an assault or a murder connected with drug use before drug prohibition began (1914). Addicts were not robbing, whoring and murdering to get drugs when they could buy all of the heroin, morphine, cocaine and anything else they wanted cheaply and legally at the corner pharmacy. Before prohibition, a legal heroin habit cost less than tobacco addiction (50¢ per week) and “drug crime” was unknown. There were no gangs shooting it out over drug turf. The term “drug crime” is an invention of prohibitionists trying to hide the effects of their failed drug policy.

Before drug prohibition, addicts held regular employment, raised decent families and were indistinguishable from teetotalers. The “junkie dope fiend” is a creation of drug prohibition, not a natural consequence of addiction. All of the crime, disease and death associated with drugs came after the drug war began in 1914.

“Drug deaths” were extremely rare when addicts used pure pharmaceutical drugs, so the drug crusaders must accept responsibility for every “life that has been brought down or cut short because of drugs.” The fact that lunatic drug warriors are indoctrinating our children into a drug policy that causes nothing but death, disease and crime is perverse.

People who doubt the destructiveness of a drug crusade need to consider the fact that the US had the worst epidemic of teen alcoholism ever during

alcohol prohibition. The “Noble Experiment” which was done to “save the children from booze” had the opposite effect. Kids as young as 12 years of age were customers in speakeasies which never checked IDs for age. A kid could get all of the rotgut liquor they could pay for — exactly the same situation that exists with outlaw drugs today!

Drug gangs, criminal drug cartels, drug crime, overdoses, blood borne injection diseases and “dope fiend junkies” are all consequences of an ill-conceived drug war that has been failing since 1914.

Ralph Givens

Dale City, Calif.