October 17, 2012Dear Sir,I read with interest John Zuill’s letter to the Editor in today’s Royal Gazette. He starts his letter by reasoning that because it is impossible to win the war on drugs and because illegal drugs make some people very rich drugs should be made legal.I wish to address that early part of his letter. First, I agree with Mr Zuill that the war on drugs cannot be won and it has always bothered me that crime fighting agencies and governments continue to foster such foolishness. The war on drugs can never be won … but to my mind that does not mean we should not wage that war.Mr Zuill’s argument can also be used to advocate the legalisation of murder, rape, pornography, slavery, burglary, racism, hate crimes in fact every crime committed. Have you noticed that it does not matter how much time, money and laws we throw at winning our wars on any criminal activity, we have never and will never win them either? Lots of tax money goes into trying to win those unwinnable wars too and lots of bad people are getting rich from such illegal activities.Sounds pretty silly to me. Should we give up our war on racism because we actually will never be able to stop it? Give up our war on pornography because there are certainly people getting very rich from that ‘trade’ and we will never be able to stop it. Murder? Have we been able to stop murder since Cane and after all the tax money we have spent on that ‘war’? By Mr Zuill’s argument, we should legalise them all.Mr Zuill writes: ‘... and makes a criminal of every kid who blew dope in school’. Did you steal as a kid? To paraphrase Mr Zuill, ‘Did you, Oh Reader, ever steal? If so, I accuse you: Criminal!) Oh my gosh, lets make stealing legal.Pick a crime; pick any illegal behaviour; we have not and we never will ‘win’ that war … but that does not mean we should not fight those wars and put all our effort and money into fighting those wars.If you want to legalise drugs, at least come up with a good reason to do so but please don’t trot out the same old whine “but we can’t win the war so let’s not fight it”. Please.MARK EMMERSONPembroke