‘Bennett the Drug Czar’
Enough already!
The time has come to take a hard look at the drug epidemic and prescribe a new, and hopefully, better treatment than the present failed “war on drugs.” We are not losing the current war--we have lost it.
It is time now to legalize the drugs, and sell them in government-controlled stores. Legalization does not denote endorsement of using drugs, anymore than repeal of the Volstead Act endorsed the use of alcohol.
The benefits are obvious. The government sells the drugs to one and all at one-tenth the current cost, thus decimating the wave of robberies and personal assaults that now make up 80% of current crime. This would do away with foreign and domestic drug merchants, and their obscene amounts of cash. Banks and brokerage houses would no longer be tempted to launder illegal monies, and the drug-addicted population would be controlled.
Now is the time for reassessment of a failed policy, and time for a mid-course correction. Anti-substance education would include all abused drugs: alcohol, narcotics, uppers, and downers.
And finally, new and tough laws, quickly and evenly enforced, would put all peddlers of drugs in jail for long terms, at hard labor.
WM. G. WINSOR III
Hacienda Heights
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