Letter to the Editor

Your View

Friday, February 1, 2002

Mike, I can't believe that you would take the side of someone who would get lighter on crime. You know how bad the drug problem is here in Sikeston, and to think that being easier on them is totally off base. We only spank their hands now. That is why it has gotten worse, not better.

We should use some of the excess money they say we have and build separate prisons for the drug offenders. Then we can educate them and give them the help some of them need. Drug pushers need to be put away for life. You put them away and then those that are hooked won't be as many. Do the reforming you want, but in prison. They are captive then and have to at least listen. I do agree that they need to be separated from the more violent ones. Senator Caskey's is nuts and his answer is bad and too liberal for my taste.

Where do you draw the line on who goes to prison and who doesn't? You want to lighten the prison population? Get the boys in Jeff City to change some of the laws and make some of the drugs legal. You want to slow drug use down and put a drug tax on them like they do beer and liquor. You know any time the boys in Jeff City get involved, it slows everything down.

They will probably do more for the drug war that way by slowing it down than anything they have done so far. Then you can control it, or at least get money back to use in the reform Caskey is talking about. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying legalizing all drugs, but some of them could be done.

Charlie Wade