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From: Stephen L. Sturgill [steve@stevesturgill.com] Editor: With all due respect to Chairman Manuel of the Tohono O'odham Nation, his essay in Tuesday's Republic was a crock of nonsense. Considering all of the pressing needs Mr. Manuel says his Nation has, one would think he'd stop wasting the precious resources, represented by his 74 police officers, in the endless war on drugs. He might put these scarce resources to work, instead, on something that would yield real benefits to his Nation. How about a few more teachers or nurses, for example, or alcohol and other drug treatment options? One could come up with a long list of suggestions. Mr. Manuel plays with numbers in his column. For instance, 9,122 grams of cocaine is nothing. He just makes it look like something by using grams to contrast his 20 pounds with the many tons of cocaine that enter this country all the time. The seven tons of marijuana he says his officers seized is also nothing compared to quantities smuggled yearly. For Heaven's sake, he points out himself that the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, alone, nabbed more than 100 tons in 1999, and that had to have been a quarter, at the very best, of what actually came across in that sector. Let's forget about the rest of the border (more than 1,500 miles) and domestic drug production, for now. Chairman Manuel's and his officers' efforts in this regard are for nothing, and he wants to pour more money down that bottomless pit? Thanks, but no thanks, for wasting his Nation's resources in the name of my health. I'll take my chances on legalization, which would solve part of Mr. Manuel's problem by eliminating the incentive to smuggle drugs across his border with Mexico. But that's another topic. Finally, Mr. Manuel might consider composing his next column on the morality of using revenues from one vice to combat another vice. He wrote that casino gaming finances his diversion. And it's "gambling," Mr. Manuel, not "gaming." Gambling. Gaming is what kids do with their computers, of which you might get a few with the savings from curbing your extravagance. Waste your own money, Mr. Manuel, not mine. Steve Sturgill |