On June 14, New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman was quoted in the Bergen Record calling for increased penalties for offenses involving the drug ecstasy. Severe sentences have been tried for every other drug, and have uniformly failed to reduce either the prevalence of drug abuse or the severity of its consequences. The nation's jails and prisons now hold over 400,000 nonviolent drug offenders and more than 2,000,000 prisoners, a disgraceful situation for the "land of the free" that has been criticized by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International.

Please visit http://www.drcnet.org/states/newjersey/ -- a site sponsored by the Drug Reform Coordination Network -- and send a free e-mail or fax to your state legislators asking that they oppose Gov. Whitman's escalation of ecstasy sentences -- harsher sentences will increase, not decrease, the danger to ecstasy users. Please also write down your legislators' phone numbers, which the web site will present, and call them on the phone as well.

Please also send a letter to the editor to the Record:
[email protected]

Any graduate of Economics 101 knows that supply will fill demand, so targeting dealers for prison time, short or long, won't make any difference. Maybe instead of running for the Senate, Christy Whitman should go back to college and retake that class, since she obviously didn't get it the first time.