why huge speed difference btwn 1.52 and 2.1?

[robin senior]

I have a pretty simple script for processing a flat file db, running on
Python 2.1; I tried running it under 1.52 for kicks, and to my surprise it
ran almost 10 times as fast! Could someone let me know why 2.1 would be so
much slower?

Cheers,
-robin

##################

import re
import string

states = {
'ALABAMA':'AL',
'ALASKA':'AK',
'ARIZONA':'AZ',
'WISCONSIN':'WI',
'WYOMING':'WY'}

for year in range(1994, 1998):

    f = open('states/USA'+str(year)+'.TXT')
    counter = 1
    while(1):
        print str(year), counter
		        counter = counter + 1

        #convert city name to allcaps (change to string.strip(f.readline())
in 1.5.2)
        line = string.upper(f.readline().strip())

        #check for EOF
		        if not line:
			            break

		        for state in states.keys():
            #(STATENAME) OR (STATE ABBREVIATION)
            if ( (re.search(' '+state+'( |,)', line, re.IGNORECASE)) or
(re.search(' '+states[state]+'( |,)', line, re.IGNORECASE)) ):
                filename = string.replace(state, ' ', '_')
				                g = open('states/'+filename+'/'+str(year)+'.TXT', "a")
				                g.write(line)
                g.write("\n")
				                g.close()
    f.close()