Marijuana Policy Project

Thank you for presenting the prohibitionist view offered by John P. Walters, a man of significant experience and stature ("Drugs: To Legalize or Not," Weekend Journal, April 25). If the defense of the indefensible had been presented by an individual of lesser accomplishments you could be justifiably accused of bias in favor of the opposing argument presented by Steven B. Duke. To my knowledge no other national newspaper has undertaken this third-rail issue.

Mr. Duke's reference to the undeniably successful eight-year-old Portuguese experiment would be immediately comprehensible to my 12-year-old granddaughter, though perhaps not to her five-year-old sister or to those Americans who steadfastly cling to the notion of the perfectibility of human nature.

As Mr. Walters points out, repealing prohibition didn't end crime, but it removed the glamour and money from bootlegging. The real victims of repeal were among the small criminal element of police, politicians and judges. What has reduced the drug, alcohol and tobacco-abusing segments to today's levels is not, as Mr. Walters would have us believe, an expensive war on drugs, but widespread and successful education efforts by health professionals and governments.

Twenty-first century repeal would cut the ground out from under the wealthy and corrupting Latin American drug syndicates, as well as the Taliban and other beneficiaries of our current drug policy. We could call a halt to the incarceration of minority drug users now subject to discriminatory drug prosecutions, close half our prisons, and divert precious resources now wasted on our war on drugs to constructive uses.