Subject: Another Failed Policy: Larry, White House drug czar John P. Walters should think twice before criticizing a foreign government for its drug policy, much less holding the United States out as a model. Looking to the United States as a role model for drug control is like looking to apartheid South Africa for how to deal with race. This country leads the world in per-capita incarceration rates, with less than 5% of the world's population but almost 25% of the world's prisoners. About 500,000 people are in U.S. prisons and jails today for violating a drug law; that's almost 10 times the total in 1980. Despite this dismal record, the United States has succeeded in constructing a global drug prohibition regime modeled after its own highly punitive and moralistic approach. Rarely has one nation so successfully promoted its own failed policies to the rest of the world. EN

RESPONSE: There just does not seem to be any kind of intellectual growth curve in terms of those who wish to determine what is moral and what is not and how we legislate that for society. Drugs are ubiquitous and by legalizing some of the less dangerous ones we will be facing the reality that we faced with alcohol decades ago. Pot should be made legal and heavily taxed... that would raise a lot of money for a government that is incapable of cutting waste and cut crime and the prison population.