Quoting Barack Obama

SIR – I was disturbed to see that a quote from “The Audacity of Hope” was seemingly distorted to support the contention that Barack Obama does not value engagement with Europe (Lexington, March 14th). You said that President Obama's book includes a “reference to the idea that America should ‘round up the United Kingdom and Togo' as supporters—and then do as it pleases.” In fact, the passage in question makes precisely the opposite point and is worth quoting in full so that readers have the correct context:

Once we get beyond matters of self-defence, though, I'm convinced that it will almost always be in our strategic interest to act multilaterally rather than unilaterally when we use force around the world. By this I do not mean that the UN Security Council—a body that in its structure and rules too often appears frozen in a cold war-era time warp—should have a veto over our actions. Nor do I mean that we round up the United Kingdom and Togo and then do as we please. Acting multilaterally means doing what George H.W. Bush and his team did in the first Gulf war—engaging in the hard diplomatic work of obtaining most of the world's support for our actions, and making sure our actions serve to further recognise international norms.

President Obama met Gordon Brown recently for a serious, substantive exchange about how the G20 countries can together restore confidence in the world economy. Hillary Clinton, on her first trip to Europe as secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the vice-president, during his two visits to Europe, have made it clear that the United States is committed to fully engaging with our European friends and allies on a full range of economic and security challenges. To suggest otherwise is incorrect, and to distort the president's words is unworthy of The Economist.

Richard LeBaron

Chargé d'affaires ad interim

United States Embassy

London

Drugs and legalisation

SIR – We read your leader and briefing on how prohibition has failed to halt the trade in illegal drugs (“How to stop the drug wars”, March 7th). We agree with your assertion that a massive criminal market is an unintended consequence of controlling drugs. Indeed, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has called attention to this issue in a recent report to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. However, we reach a different conclusion to you and find that legalisation is not the solution.

Drugs are controlled because they are harmful, they are not harmful because they are controlled. Legalising the use of drugs would be tantamount to losing a portion of every generation to addiction. Choosing between public health and public security is a false dilemma. Governments should, and can, do both. To reduce supply, more resources are needed to eradicate poverty and not just illicit crops. To reduce demand, more attention should be placed on drug prevention and treatment.

To tackle drug-trafficking, states should use international agreements against organised crime and corruption. The fact that certain transactions are hard to control does not mean that they should be made legal. I doubt that The Economist would support the legalisation of paedophilia, human-trafficking or arms-smuggling as “the least bad solution”.

Walter Kemp

Spokesman and speechwriter

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Vienna

SIR – You are right to reiterate the case against drug prohibition, but regulation and taxation just will not work. Opium and cocaine are cheap to grow, high value and low weight, so the hundredfold mark-up to which you refer is almost wholly due to their illegality. Any conceivable tax would fall far short of equating to a hundredfold mark-up, and would in any case be emasculated by smuggling.

Analogies with alcohol and tobacco are misleading. Relative to drugs, these are bulky and low value, and neither face anything remotely corresponding to a hundredfold mark-up. Regulation and taxation are thus fairly straightforward. The only feasible alternative to prohibition is to take the international drug-trade into public ownership.

It is demand in developed countries that is driving this trade. Licensed growers should be directly linked to registered users. Such an approach could be phased, each country moving at its own pace. Over time, the market share of illicit drugs would be steadily squeezed and trafficker income and profits would drain away.

Jeremy Berkoff

London

SIR – Separating the markets for hard and soft drugs is critical. As long as cannabis distribution is controlled by organised criminals, consumers of the most popular illicit drug will continue to come into contact with sellers of addictive drugs. Cannabis should be taxed and regulated like alcohol, only without the ubiquitous advertising.

Robert Sharpe

Policy analyst

Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington, DC

SIR – The evidence in support of your 20-year campaign in favour of legalising drugs has become ever more compelling. In 2000 I argued in your pages that the drug war had failed based on my experience in Colombia in the early 1990s (Letters, March 18th 2000). It is striking how much the costs of the drug war have mounted since then. In Colombia, despite improvements in security and $6 billion of American aid, cocaine production continues at roughly the same level and about 3,000 people still die every year because of cocaine-related conflict.

Many ministers and officials will admit in private that current policies have done much more harm than good but are not prepared to speak out because they see no point given entrenched American attitudes or hostile public-opinion. With the Obama administration showing a willingness to review both domestic and foreign policy this must be the moment to consider seriously the solution The Economist has so persistently proposed.

Sir Keith Morris

British ambassador to Colombia, 1990-94

London

SIR – You have given up far too soon on the war on drugs. It worked for Mao in defeating opium, after all. The strategy is simple: send all drug users to “re-education” camps, execute the dealers, and most importantly, do so within the context of an authoritarian and isolated society. A few more Patriot Acts, plus a healthy dose of protectionism, and we should be just about ready to emulate Mao's success.

Adam Skory

Berkeley, California

The following letters on drugs appear online only

SIR – As a veteran of the war on drugs, with some 1,000 arrests under my belt, I have witnessed the utter futility of prohibition. There is no historic evidence that prohibition reduces drug use. Just about anyone who is going to do drugs uses them, regardless of their legal status. In fact, it is the notion of a “forbidden fruit” and prohibition-created profits that entice both young users and dealers. Youths report in federal surveys that it is easier for them to buy illegal drugs than beer or cigarettes.

Polls show that very few Americans would try heroin or cocaine if it were legalised tomorrow. There is no dam of potential drug users being held back by prohibition. Ending it would remove the violence in the same way that repealing the prohibition on alcohol did. This would be a pure win-win situation for everyone but drug dealers and terrorists.

Jack Cole

Director

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Medford, Massachusetts

SIR – Many illegal drugs, particularly stimulants like crack and ice, often induce violent psychosis in heavy users. Crack and ice are also hideously addictive, far beyond the imagination of well-meaning people whose opinions about drugs were shaped by smoking a few spliffs in the 1960s. Using a little willpower just does not cut it anymore. Four out of five people who try crack, even once, are enslaved to it for the rest of their miserable, stunted lives.

Medical science simply does not know how to help these unfortunates. The current drug war is a disaster, but any policy that increases availability still further will almost certainly lead to a catastrophic upsurge in random, drug-fuelled violence, as drug-gorging addicts lose their minds in a psychotic orgy of mass destruction.

Eric Worrall

Southampton

SIR – You are misguided in recommending that money saved from enforcing prohibition would be better spent treating addictions. Drug treatment does little more than enable drug use. In developed countries, rehab is the gateway to an expanding array of social-welfare and mental-health services that create disincentives for addicts to cut their consumption. Studies touting the effectiveness of drug treatment have little validity because they are based on self-reports.

Dr Michael Reznicek

Psychiatrist

Spokane, Washington

SIR – Any amount of funds designated for stopping drug- trafficking will never be enough. The higher investment in policing increases the price of drugs, delivering higher gains to the “narcos”. These market forces will always make investment in policing drugs insufficient.

Mexico needs to reform its law enforcement at all levels, from petty thieves to white-collar corruption. Nevertheless, America could show its true support by acknowledging its fair share of accountability in drug issues. Mexico should stop fighting the war on drugs on behalf of the United States. If America does not want a narco state as a neighbour and second-biggest trading partner, it should fight this war on its own soil.

Ignacio Gallo

Mexico City

SIR – An underestimated impediment to drug legalisation is the addiction of various governmental and law-enforcement agencies to the proceeds from properties seized in the quest to catch drug gangs. Illicit drugs are a great revenue stream for governments.

Ray Wilfinger

Cary, North Carolina

SIR – Your solution to the drug wars is not at all “messy”, but logical and correct. Ironically, on this side of the Atlantic, it is the free market, get-the-government-off-our-backs crowd that is crowing the loudest to keep drugs in the hands of the gangsters, criminals and warlords. Condemning someone to the joint for lighting up a joint won't stop people from using drugs any more than preaching abstinence will stop people from engaging in sex.

Fred Bercovitch

San Diego

The following letter on Kenya appears online only

Tackling Kenyan corruption

SIR – Ivan Lewis's reaction to your review of Michela Wrong's book on Kenya, “It's Our Turn to Eat”, is tetchy. The last paragraph of his letter challenges you to offer alternative policies to those pursued by Britain's Department for International Development (Mr Lewis's letter appeared online only on March 12th). Tempting, if you believed DfID would take serious notice.

Mr Lewis might have read the book before reacting to your review. It contains ideas. My suggestions would be: expose, campaign and isolate grossly corrupt leaders who have demonstrably damaged Kenya and its people's interests and well-being; stand by the whistleblowers when things get tough; and stand on Jack Straw's toes to clean up Britain's own sleazy record of inactivity.

Sir Edward Clay

Former High Commissioner for the United Kingdom to Kenya

London

Handel's handle

SIR – The first thing I learned in a musicology course given by Paul Henry Lang, a distinguished Handel scholar at Columbia University, was how to pronounce the great composer's name correctly (“Georgian splendour”, March 21st). Omitting the umlaut in texts is bad enough, but forgivable if you don't have a German keyboard on your computer. The universal practice of music teachers and radio presenters pronouncing it as “Handle” or “Hahndel” was considered sacrilege by Professor Lang. The proper pronunciation? “Hehndel”, through pursed lips, of course.

Les Dreyer

Retired violinist at the Metropolitan Opera orchestra

New York