Decertify America, not Mexico

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

This letter appeared in the Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) on 21 March 1997.

This item may be cited as M. R. Franks, Letter to the Editor: Decertify America, not Mexico, Baton Rouge Advocate, March 21, 1997, at 10B.

Dear Editor:

Instead of decertifying Mexico, our esteemed representatives in Congress should be honest enough to vote to decertify the United States.

After all, Gen. Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo was arrested and is now behind bars. That's more than happened to the gang that masterminded the drug operation at Mena, Ark.

With 6 percent of the world's population, America consumes 60 percent of the world's illegal drugs. We are a dysfunctional country.

But I'll bet our elected representatives will try to externalize all that: The United States blaming everyone else for its national addiction is the collective equivalent of the alcoholic who blames everyone else - boss, wife, kids, bartender - for his addiction.

It's demagoguery trying to control the supply side of the equation, in the process blaming others with unashamed hypocrisy, while doing practically nothing about the demand here at home. The law of supply and demand is inexorable: As long as America has a demand for illegal drugs, there will always be a supply.

Please realize that a healthy society has no use for drugs, and that in a stable and prosperous society that educates its children well and treats everyone fairly, the drug dealer is a pariah who will be run out of town. Drugs have existed for thousands of years, but America needed no laws against them until this century.

Please, Congress, no more cosmetic solutions; no more blaming others. For once, take control of a problem by focusing on root causes.

M. R. Franks
2 Swan St.
Baton Rouge

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