Pubdate: Sun, 12 Sep 2004
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2004 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Mark Thornton
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v04/n1265/a11.html
Note: Another of 8 letters published in response to the Post's editorial 
'It's Time to Rethink and Reform Drug Laws'
See: http://www.mapinc.org/source/Denver+Post

SHOULD U.S. END WAR ON DRUGS?

The authors of the book "The New Prohibition" are certainly right when they 
document that drug prohibition has been a failure and has resulted in 
"unintended consequences" that have adversely impacted the American public. 
Your own call for a repeal of minimum mandatory sentencing and to allow 
state governments to implement their own drug policy is certainly a 
sensible place to start.

However, William F. Buckley's call for heavy regulation and taxation of 
"legalized" drugs is in truth a form of prohibition called 
"neoprohibition." This approach does reduce the harm of prohibition, but 
why should we accept such a half-measure? Full legalization would 
completely eliminate the harm of prohibition and illegal markets and bring 
the full force of market regulation and social institutions to control the 
harmful effects of drug abuse. A free society rests on the proposition that 
people are allowed to fail and on the experience that only a free society 
is capable of adequately dealing with problems associated with the 
inevitable fallibility of man.

Mark Thornton, Auburn, Ala.

The writer is a senior fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake