Government policies are clear, and they encourage local police to allow drugs to flow on the streets.

Here’s why: If the police seize drugs, they have to destroy them. If the police seize cash they get to keep it. This is a huge incentive for cash-strapped police departments to allow drugs to be “liquidated” – sold – in your community before “busting” the dealers.

Your community has a drug problem because authorities want it to have one.

The chemical needed for meth is only made in four factories on the planet, all in China. Meth was a totally preventable epidemic, but for over-the-counter cold medicine making people too drowsy to work, and the powerful lobby behind sales of these medications. These factories would close tomorrow if OTC cold medicines just allowed drowsiness to be an acceptable side effect.

Heroin comes from Afghanistan. One would think that with the U.S. having invaded Afghanistan that the world would be heroin-free and the drug war won.

Quite the opposite is true. Why? Well, for a start, you can’t have a war on drugs without drugs, now can you?

It really doesn’t matter to the local sheriff if your kid gets hooked, so long as he gets his cash seizures and popcorn headlines.

Nels Lopez

Las Vegas, Nev.