Fight War on Terror, Not Drugs

Rachel Ehrenfeld’s “Afghanistan and Heroin” [Opinion, January 3, 2005] touts mycoherbicides as a “relatively simple means of ridding the world of the illegal drug scourge.” In reality, it’s a simplistic and unworkable idea for the complex problem of drugs and drug control. Eradication has proven itself immune to the “push-down, pop-up” effect that would increase opium production in other key poppy growing regions like Latin America and Asia. And mycoherbicides won’t work on synthetic drugs that are produced in labs, not grown.

A limited approach to eradicate poppy fields that are tied to terrorist financing would be appropriate, albeit difficult. But provoking Afghans who are growing poppies for subsistence and will fight to defend their fields, let alone warlords who have been integrated into the Karzai administration, would be the height of neo-con folly. Afghan farmers whose fields have been eradicated have been forced to sell their daughters to opium dealers.

Unfortunately, neo-cons will never accept the long-term solution-ending opium prohibition, which would wither terrorist bank accounts and give opiate users a safe, legal and relatively benign alternative to illegal and impure street heroin.

DOUGLAS GREENE
Cedarhurst, N.Y.

‘Reverse Reparations’

What’s next, genetic testing to find out how much “black blood” or “white blood” courses through the veins of Social Security recipients to fix their level of benefits [“Reverse Reparations,” Editorial, January 27, 2005]? To put it in newspaper-printable words, “stuff happens” and the elderly are least able to overcome the “stuff” that befalls them. Social Security is a group safety net – as an American citizen, I do not want to see any older American citizen living in poverty-stricken conditions whether due to their own spendthrift habits while young or due to a catastrophic event beyond their control.

When we start defining benefit levels by personal characteristics, we lose the American ideal that justice is blind. For Republicans to pander to African Americans by promising higher benefits in their current quest to reduce the FDR inspired “nanny” state of government is pure pandering.

BARRY M. BENJAMIN
Manhattan

Columbia Entitled to Due Process

I deeply regret the decision to postpone the Columbia University conference on peace in the Middle East [“Israeli Backs Out of Columbia Event,” Jacob Gershman, Page 1, January 26, 2005]. The charges against faculty members remain unsubstantiated while the motives and base of support for the “David Project” remain unknown, a journalistic failure for which you bear responsibility, because The New York Sun has promoted this controversy, ready to pronounce judgment without weighing all the evidence.

The unnamed Jewish leaders whom the Israeli ambassador consulted do not speak for me or many other Jews. Many are chosen for their financial or other services; their depth of understanding of Middle East politics and the issues that Israel and its Arab neighbors must deal with cannot compare with that of faculty members at a world-class university.

I attend many talks and forums on this subject at Columbia where insight, balance, and an authentic commitment to a peaceful settlement that recognizes the rights and needs of all parties is never absent from the discussion.

SUMNER M. ROSEN
Professor Emeritus
Columbia University
Manhattan

Vocational Training Still Sensible

I want to congratulate the New York City Department of Education for reinventing the wheel [“Vocational Programs Planned for ‘Young People…Going Nowhere,’ ” Julia Levy, New York, January 12, 2005].

Up until the ’60s, New York City had many vocational training high schools, e.g., automotive trades, Merchant Marine, office skills, etc. These schools had academic classes as well, which did not require Regents examinations. Those who wanted to go onto college, went to academic high schools. These were the only schools that required Regents examinations. Thus, there were schools that fit many needs, those of students and the public that needed skilled workers.

Somewhere in the ’60s, the emphasis of education became preparation for college. What happened to vocational training?

Perhaps one of many reasons for high drop-out rates is that academic subjects do not interest high school students, nor can they see how the subjects are relevant to their lives.

GERALD SCHWARTZ
Tarrytown, N.Y.

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