The “war on drugs” was coined by President Richard Nixon. A top Nixon aide, John Ehrlichman, later admitted that it was aimed at Mr. Nixon’s two major enemies, the antiwar left and black people: Criminalization meant that “ we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

The war on drugs had little or nothing to do with health or safety. It was about political persecution.

Roger Carasso

Santa Fe, N.M.

To the Editor:

Wow ! Are you kidding me? This is the most fantasized assessment of Seattle’s drug epidemic I’ve ever seen. In actuality, we are spiraling toward complete social meltdown here, and Nicholas Kristof thinks we’ve figured out how to end the war on drugs?

As a three-decade resident of Seattle, I can tell you that from the sprawling homeless camps ringing the city, to the bedraggled hordes of dead-eyed addicts on Second Avenue, to the piles of human feces in Pioneer Square , there is no progress being made to end the heroin epidemic in this city. Whatever actions local governments are taking only make things worse.

Seattle is becoming a wasteland of crime, refuse, excrement and addiction. It’s disgusting to watch and it gets worse every year.

Bryan Gruner

Bellevue, Wash.

To the Editor:

Tobacco products, which kill almost 500,000 people per year , are legal, and still advertised to a limited extent. Alcoholic beverages, which kill about 88,000 people annually, are not only legal but also widely advertised. Many of the opioid deaths are a result of accidental overdoses because users are unaware of just how much drug is in a particular dosage they consume.

Why not legalize opioids but: sell them only from government operated “package stores” (as alcohol still is in certain jurisdictions) so that doses are known; have no advertising; have a massive public health program? Accidental overdose deaths would be virtually eliminated; the criminal drug trade would be eliminated; and, if the tobacco-use cessation program model were followed, use would go down.