Mayor Lori Lightfoot continues to search for a weapon that can change the violent consequences of drug prohibition policy. She should be congratulated for anti-violence efforts but more importantly for realizing that huge prohibition profits drive the violent drug trade and arm citizens, good and bad, with firearms. The mayor’s plan, called the Victims Justice Ordinance, aims to take ill-gotten drug profits from gangs.

For decades, taking the profit out of drug dealing has been a key strategy of America’s war on drugs. The idea has been to increase the cost of doing business to such an extent that drug dealing would become uneconomical. It hasn’t worked.

The mayor’s plan is like standing under a waterfall and trying to stop the flooding by using buckets to catch water. We should not discourage her. Instead, the mayor should be advised to go to the top of the cascading waterfall and call for an end to drug prohibition that makes the water fall. She needs to scream loudly enough so national leaders such as President Joe Biden, U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, and Vice President Kamala Harris hear her. She should scream loudly enough so governors such as J.B. Pritzker can hear her.

The question will then become: Is it time to end America’s failed and futile war on drugs?

Is it time to legalize drugs, license dealers and require fixed places of business, government inspection of drug products, age limits on purchase and substance labeling? Doing so would better control drugs, reduce overdose accidents, take profits from drug gangs and free police to work on improving Chicago crime clearance rates, as suggested by Rabbi Seth Limmer and the Revs. Michael Pfleger, Otis Moss III and Ciera Bates-Chamberlain in an Aug. 5 Tribune op-ed (“The city can reduce gun violence by improving clearance rates”). They write that low clearance rates are a “result of strategic choices in police hierarchy. Specifically, we have seen how the war on drugs reallocated resources from homicide units and detective squads to teams of police continually arresting low-level drug offenders.”

— James E. Gierach, Palos Park

I read Caroline Kubzansky’s story “‘It’s a lucky dress’” (Aug. 9) and immediately thought of my mother-in-law.

My sister-in-law, Sunny, was rebuilding her life after a failed marriage, and she handed her mother a box containing her wedding dress and told her mother to throw it away.

My mother-in-law, Oniela, was a caring, giving woman. She was a Cuban refugee sponsored by Catholic Charities who came to Chicago with her husband and three daughters. She took the dress with her on a visit back to Cuba.

That wedding dress made 20 brides beautiful on their wedding days. To this day, it’s still being altered to fit new brides for their special walk down the aisle.

My mother-in-law is gone now, but every now and then, I’m reminded of her kindness to others and a dress well passed on.

I enjoyed Caroline Kubzansky’s Marshall Field’s wedding dress story.

I grew up in Chicago, and when I see any stories that mention Marshall Field’s and the traditions shared by family members, it is always a pleasure to read them. The stories bring back fond memories!

I have already made copies of this great story to share with my family and friends as we all take a trip down memory lane.

It was a pleasure to read a happy newspaper story for my memory bank! Thank you.

Please help me understand why smoking is prohibited, even at outside venues, when sun protection spray is not.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating for reversing no smoking rules but merely hoping that lawmakers will recognize the hazards of these other pollutants.

It doesn’t take more than common sense to realize that the spray that you are aiming at your child is not confined to your child but is affecting other people in the vicinity. Not only am I concerned about what is entering our lungs, but we’re also subjected to the film on contact lenses and the taste that it leaves in the mouth.

To add insult to injury, we then need to put up with the argument from the person doing the spraying. On a recent trip to Centennial Beach in Naperville, I had a young mother tell me that she would “spray faster,” as if that were the only solution that she could possibly agree to.

Since common sense does not prevail, can we please get assistance from management and policymakers?

So far this summer, I have seen only one monarch butterfly, two giant swallowtails, two tiger swallowtails, no mourning cloaks, no red admirals, and just a few white or yellow sulphurs. And I see no evidence of monarch caterpillars on milkweed plants, and hardly any oak and cherry tree leaves show any signs of other pollinators’ larvae.

— Ken Mozingo, master naturalist, Yorkville

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