[420 Girl]

I have been waiting for the letters to appear attacking Bill Berlow's July 18 column questioning our war on drugs, and his suggestion that it is time for legalization of some drugs.

I have been waiting for the bravos in response to the My View column of William H. Janes, director of the Florida Office of Drug control, who clearly is against legalization of any drug. With the exception of a couple of Zings!, the lack of response to either column tells me that people are now ready to indeed rethink this failure of a policy.

I think it was incredibly brave of such a public person as Mr. Berlow to take such a stand on the war on drugs. And it was typical for someone in the position of Mr. Janes to have his reaction to maintain the war on drugs. Mr. Janes' column carried the headline "Legalizing drugs doesn't solve the problem," but it seems that keeping drugs illegal hasn't solved the problem either.

We are still back to square one!

We have all read about cutbacks in the state budget in regards to probation officers, and we know about the increase in the state budget to build more prisons. And exactly who is filling our prisons to capacity? Drug offenders! Who is responsible for street crimes? Drug dealers! What would happen if we removed this crime from the streets? Safer neighborhoods, perhaps? What if no one was in prison for drug offenses? What would we spend the extra money on? Education, perhaps?

It costs more to incarcerate someone than it does to educate him. We have it backwards. We have allowed this issue to become political in order for some people to have an issue to run on. Getting tough on crime has paid off for a few people, and afterward they get a nice pension while the rest of us are stuck with the bill.

Recently at a job fair at the Civic Center, there was a search for more Border Patrol agents to protect our borders from illegal immigrants. Large sums of money will be spent on this project, so then why is the president, in his most recent budget, promising $450 million to Mexico to combat its problems with drug trafficking?

If our borders are about to become safer with the increased agents, why are we giving Mexico $450 million? Let's have a show of hands of everyone who truly believes that Mexico will spend all $450 million on its drug trafficking problem!

Those are our tax dollars. Let Mexico step up to the plate and deal with its own problems. We simply cannot afford it.

On July 10 there was a story in the Democrat about a drug bust, which resulted in the confiscation of marijuana plants valued at $6.7 million right here in Tallahassee. Now if these people had not been caught and the marijuana had reached the street how much tax revenue would have resulted in that? Zero!

How many small-business owners would like to make $6.7 million tax-free? Every business owner in this country should be shouting from the rooftops about this issue.

Most of us live honest lives and pay our taxes. The drug dealers are making huge sums of money tax-free and, when they are caught, our tax dollars pay for their incarceration. There is something wrong with this picture. Let's paint another one.

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