Linda Bayer's reply to Molly Ivins ("US drug policy is sound, despite what Molly Ivins might think," The Oregonian, 11/25/98) is an almost personal defense of US Drug Czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Bayer's boss at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The superficiality of Bayer's response is illustrated by her statement, "Prohibition worked in terms of reducing rates of alcohol consumption and alcoholism; it wasn't repealed because it was a flop but because the country wanted liquor to be legal." Molly Ivins might well ask whether Linda Bayer and General McCaffrey have ever heard of a man called "'Scarface' Al Capone"?
Prohibition, both then and now, has produced gangs and vicious criminal industries in blackmarket intoxicants. Prohibition as a cure is worse than the problems caused by drug or alcohol abuse, drunk driving, domestic violence, health impairment,etc. Since the repeal of Prohibition, we now have Seagrams,Inc., Anhauser-Busch, Inc., Coors, Inc., and Ernest and Julio Gallo, instead of Al Capone, "Bugs" Moran, "Fatty" Arbuckle, and St. Valentine Day shoot-outs in the streets over bootlegged whiskey. Now the shoot-outs in the streets are over marijuana and cocaine.
In rejecting Measure 57 and by approving Measure 67 on Nov. 3,1998 , Oregon voters indicated they are beginning to accept the failure of the War on Drugs. Similarly, in 1933 the public understood that prohibition, as created by the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, supported blackmarket crime and was a failure. They passed the 21st Amendment and repealed Prohibition.