Letter: Legalize and Regulate the Drug Trade
Neill Franklin
December 12, 2008
The Washington Post
Regarding the chilling Dec. 4 front-page article "Mexico Drug Cartels Send a Message of Chaos, Death":
This mayhem occurs as a direct result of — and not despite — increased enforcement of senseless policies that make drugs illegal.
As a 32-year police officer in Maryland, I have seen how the prohibition of drugs empowers violent criminal thugs who sell them in our cities and outside our borders.
If we legalized and regulated drugs, people would buy them from legitimate sources instead of from illegal ones. But until that happens, criminals will do anything to protect their profits, including murdering rival traffickers, police officers, journalists and children.
Seventy-five years ago this month, America's leaders took away the profits of violent gangsters by having the good sense to repeal another failed and dangerous prohibition, that on alcohol. Surely, it is not too much to ask that today's policymakers consider stripping cartels and gangs of the unregulated businesses from which they have been able to get rich as a result of today's "Prohibition," the "war on drugs." | 
