Not atheism, but another subject:
Stevenage Herald, Oct 8th, 2003.

<start>

Sir

Your page one story eloquently illustrates the "hell," drugs can put
families through. It does not however address the root cause of these
problems or propose any solution except more intrusive police work.

Illegal drugs certainly cause suffering to people, primarily the
millions of burglary, mugging, car-crime and petty crime victims as
addicts seek to pay for their habit. They are certainly a threat to
society, primarily in that the unimaginably vast profits of the
illegal trade in drugs creates the actuality of unimaginable
corruption. Illegal drugs also cost society a fortune bearing in mind
that a figure approaching 70% of the UK prison population is inside
for offences that are related to illegal drugs in one way or another.
Will for example, proposed legislation to hand out 5 year terms to
those who carry a gun dissuade someone who can make tens of thousands
of pounds a week from his illegal trade from carrying it? Personally I
think not: he's more worried about his armed "business rivals" than a
theoretical jail term.

Legalisation will create new addicts. People will die as a result of
legal drugs (but probably fewer as a percentage of addicts given
regulated doses of known purity). There is no denying this.

But to legalise will remove the incentive to commit crime to pay for
the habit (who gets mugged or has their house or car broken into for
the price of a packet of cigarettes?), will remove the potential for
corruption because the money simply won't be there and as a
consequence the prison population will decrease significantly. Profits
from the government drug trade could pay for realistic drug education
campaigns and not the councils of perfection we see today that
resemble nothing if not Roman Catholic lectures on morality in AIDS
stricken Africa, and are about as useful and (more importantly)
effective.

The alternative to legalisation? Either the situation we have today,
where prohibition simply doesn't work and drug related crime and
corruption increase daily, or a level of policing to enforce
prohibition that is simply unacceptable in a free society.

In short the question of legalisation revolves around the welfare of
the victim, and the victim is not the addict or potential addict but
society at large and the victims of drug related crime, which is to
say you and me.

Yours Sincerely,
Therion Ware.
Stevenage.

<end>
They actually published as "Name Supplied, Stevenage, via e-mail".

Not atheism, but another subject:
Stevenage Herald, Oct 8th, 2003.

<start>

Sir