End drug prohibition
Dear Editor: Allow me to set the record straight when it comes to the war on drugs. Every year more tax dollars are spent, more drugs are seized, penalties for drug offenses become more severe, and still illegal drugs flood our streets and crime rates rise.
In 1919, the US attempted the prohibition of alcohol. Suddenly, responsible citizens who simply wanted a drink, found themselves to be criminals.
Legitimate alcohol manufacturers became bootleggers, and criminals who made illegal booze gave little care to quality.
Many consumers went blind or died from tainted products. Gang shootouts became common, and organized crime profited from prohibition. Liquor was harmful, but prohibition was even worse.
By 1933, our legislators realized the futility of trying to legislate morality, and prohibition was repealed. Crimes committed because of illegal booze became scarce. Once again the government is attempting prohibition, with a result of up to 80 percent of street assaults, murders and burglaries being drug related. The war on drugs perpetuates the rising crime rate by enormously inflating the prices of illegal drugs and not allowing a way for addicts to legally obtain their drugs.
The street price of heroin has been as high as 5,000 times that of hospital costs. In order to pay for a $200 a day habit, an addict has no choice but to turn to burglary, prostitution, and armed robbery.
The common sense solution to our drug problem is decriminalization. Allow the government to regulate these substances and provide real medical rehabilitation for those who are addicted. Drug criminalization results in huge black market profits and the domination of the drug trade by criminal and terror groups.
The question to ask yourself is: Do you support the war on drugs because it funds terrorism or because it funds criminals?
Our 30-year-old failing policy accomplishes nothing else but overflowing the prisons, wasting billions of tax dollars, funding criminal organizations, and deteriorating our Constitutional rights.
Supporters of decriminalization want the same thing as everyone else, safer streets and drug-free children. The United States has never even attempted to practice a policy of decriminalization. It is time for a change, time to try the safer, more humane alternative to war.
Ricki Garden
Uniontown
Character matters
Dear Editor:
In retrospect it is obvious that as long as we never again allow another Clinton-Gore administration to captivate the nation, we will be safe from future calamities such as Sept. 11, 2001.
From the first disaster at the World Trade Center, through the series of bombings of American properties abroad, the Washington leadership failed miserably to respond promptly and effectively.
The total effect was to convince the terrorists that we were a hollow shell incapable of defending ourselves.
Emboldened by Clinton’s whining about the bombings, the terrorists entered our country at will, were educated and trained in our schools, while the INS remained asleep at the switch. The administration talked about INS reform, but did nothing.
When the destroyer U.S. Cole was almost sent to the bottom of Yemen bay, killing 17 young men and wounding 39 other sailors, President Clinton should have been outraged. He should have declared war upon the international terrorists and those who support them. By then, he knew all about Osama bin Laden and the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.
We were prostrated before the terrorists. Three planes accomplished their evil intentions. But the passengers of the fourth plane over Pennsylvania knew what had happened in New York and Washington through their cell phones. They finally expressed America’s real courage. “Let’s roll!” changed a nonchalant official atmosphere of our country, to that of an enraged American eagle. From there on, the terrorists realized that they had underestimated America’s ability to fight back. They had concluded mistakenly that the Clinton-Gore administration represented the American people who would roll over and finally die.
The purpose of evil people can never be ignored or appeased. We have learned an expensive and deadly lesson: character, integrity and morality matters. God bless America.
Al Hopfer
Greensburg