
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 30, 1992                   TAG: 9203300209
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

DRUG CURE: WORSE THAN THE DISEASE?

WELL, THE drug wars have claimed another victim, Terry Wayne Anderson. To his family I give my deepest sympathies. As a parent myself, I can only imagine their pain and suffering at losing a child in this manner.

Whether he was an innocent bystander or an active participant in a drug deal does not alter the fact that he is dead. From what I have read in this newspaper, he was an upstanding, hard-working young man. How can we justify losing our young people like this?

Are we to keep on letting our elected leaders use us as pawns in their political ambitions? We are losing the war on drugs. The past 10 years of this so-called war have only benefited the most ruthless of the drug dealers, the law enforcement community, and the politicians who were elected to protect us.

Before our former president started to use this as a political tool, we (a) had much less violence in our own community, (b) had fewer criminals in our already overcrowded prison system, and (c) had more personal freedoms. Can we as a nation or as a community let this go on until we have no personal safety or liberties left? Our law-enforcement personnel could not enforce the prohibition of alcohol; why should we expect them to do better this time?

I do not know what to do. Stricter and stricter laws do not seem to be the solution. We need to rethink what we are trying to accomplish, or we may find the cure worse than the disease. ARTHUR D. COLE JR. ROANOKE

by CNB