Benjamin R. Patey
Gloucester Times

To the editor:

It is about time that we look at the question of drugs in a serious, intelligent manner. We live in a country that annually imprisons more of its citizens for nonviolent drug offenses than are incarcerated, for any reason, in all of Western Europe, which has a larger population.

In 2005 alone, we spent $40.5 billion to arrest, try, and imprison those guilty of drug use. To put this into perspective, that same year we spent close to half that figure, $20.9 billion, on the war in Afghanistan. Roughly half the trial time of our courts and the full time energies of our 400,000 police officers are spent fighting drug use.

How can we as a society possibly justify this expense? Yearly deaths from alcohol and tobacco are 150,000 and 430,000 respectively. Poor diet and lack of exercise cause an additional 365,000. Illegal drugs, on the other hand, are estimated to have killed only 28,000 people. Of those, none overdosed on marijuana. Drug use is not, and has never been, a serious threat.

There is no practical reason to punish so harshly this clearly victimless crime. As for the supposed immorality of drug use, I can do no better than quote one of my idols, H.L. Mencken, who wrote that "Immorality is the morality of those who are having a better time".

On Nov. 4, we will, as a state, choose whether to continue this discredited and absurd "War on Drugs" or collectively decide that we have better things to do than deprive our neighbors of their liberty at gunpoint for their private use of certain substances.

I can only hope that this motion receives the resounding support it so obviously deserves.

Benjamin R. Patey
Rockport