Our nation should have learned from its experiment with Prohibition (making alcoholic beverages illegal) that, where there is demand, there will be supply. Since demand is driven by personal tastes of large numbers of consumers, and personal taste cannot be legislated, our body politic needs to find ways other than criminal prosecution to deal with our drug trade. One element of reform is to categorize drugs according to harm to the person using them.

There should always be efforts at public education as well as inclusion of educational materials in texts used in our schools. I feel it is self-defeating to be overly descriptive of the harmful effects of a product since potential consumers are very discerning in detecting over-zealous efforts at manipulating their tastes. So honesty is the best policy in describing sources, perils, costs, detection, . . .

We err in our national drug policy by recognizing only one degree of lawlessness. The entire array of street drugs, hallucinogens, etc., should be divided into categories based on harmfulness. Of course, many drugs, such as headache remedies and laxatives, are commonly available over the counter today and I make no suggestions regarding those. Of those things today regarded as street drugs, the lesser harmful should be freely available and taxed just as tobacco and alcohol products -- recreational products all -- are taxed. Those potentially producing deleterious health effects or mental health problems should be freely available by medical prescription. Dangerous drugs should be available by medical prescription under a system with more elaborate controls than the previous category. And the deadly drugs, assuming they have legitimate uses in research or treatment or pain control, should be available only through specific rigidly-controlled channels with a limited number of practitioners permitted by law to prescribe them. Four categories.

Penalties for violation should range from modest fines to execution, depending on the severity of results in the hands of users.

For those who feel execution too harsh, let me recite the history of the Russian conversion of their system of weights from the old system to the metric system now in use. The Russian government (Lenin's followers) decreed that, by a certain date, all scales in use must be converted to metric; the deadline came and went with scarcely any effect whatsoever. Another deadline was set with penalties, but that deadline came and went, with scarcely any effect. A third deadline was set, but this time the penalty was announced that anyone found using the old system would be summarily executed; needless to say no executions were necessary because the changes were made.

So it is: If we are truly serious about eradicating an evil from our society, the penalties for continuing that evil must be set extremely high. Traffickers in deadly drugs are fully aware of the consequences to their customers; making such drugs available is little different from murder-for-profit. And I would think that the death penalty would be wholly reasonable.