Pubdate: Fri, 15 Feb 2002
Source: Duluth News-Tribune (MN)
Copyright: 2002 Duluth News-Tribune
Contact:  http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthtribune/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/553
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n192/a05.html?1219
Author: Heidi Bakk-Hansen

U.S. FAILURES CONTRIBUTE TO TERRORISM

Your Feb. 5 editorial about how buying illegal drugs contributes to 
terrorism and the Colombian mafia: Any young person (the target of the 
Super Bowl ads you touted) with two brain cells to rub together can see the 
obvious flaw in this argument. If drugs weren't illegal, people could grow 
them in their back yards and thus cut out black market criminals altogether.

So what exactly is contributing to terrorism? Could it be the U.S. failure 
of a drug war? Besides that, are they going to make any ads pointing out 
the myriad ways average, non-drug-using Americans contribute to world 
instability and terrorism by our chronic overuse of fossil fuels, a myopic 
indifference to the consequences of unregulated world trade, and our 
self-defeating over reliance on militarism? Gee, then those statements in 
the ad would apply to nearly everyone, old and young alike!

Guess we all "helped kids learn how to kill... helped put human beings into 
slavery... helped kill a judge... and helped blow up buildings." You're 
right. That is pretty horrible. But it wouldn't be a very popular Super 
Bowl ad.

HEIDI BAKK-HANSEN, DULUTH
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