Posted on 08/08/2005 8:54:06 PM PDT by neverdem
America has a serious drug problem, but it's not the "meth epidemic" getting so much publicity. It's the problem identified by William Bennett, the former national drug czar and gambler.
"Using drugs," he wrote, "is wrong not simply because drugs create medical problems; it is wrong because drugs destroy one's moral sense. People addicted to drugs neglect their duties."
This problem afflicts a small minority of the people who have tried methamphetamines, but most of the law-enforcement officials and politicians who lead the war against drugs. They're so consumed with drugs that they've lost sight of their duties.
Like addicts desperate for a high, they've declared meth the new crack, which was once called the new heroin (that title now belongs to OxyContin). With the help of the press, they're once again frightening the public with tales of a drug so seductive it instantly turns masses of upstanding citizens into addicts who ruin their health, their lives and their families.
Amphetamines can certainly do harm and are a fad in some places. But there's little evidence of a new national epidemic from patterns of drug arrests or drug use. The percentage of high school seniors using amphetamines has remained fairly constant in the past decade, and actually declined slightly the past two years.
Nor is meth diabolically addictive. If an addict is someone who has used a drug in the previous month (a commonly used, if overly broad, definition), then only 5 percent of Americans who have sampled meth would be called addicts, according to the federal government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health.
That figure is slightly higher than the addiction rate for people who have sampled heroin (3 percent), but it's lower than for crack (8 percent), painkillers (10 percent), marijuana (15 percent) or cigarettes (37 percent)...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Article makes some good points but leaves me wandering what the authors true agenda is. After all. The NYT (except for some sports and stocks) rarely reports news.
Yes kids, drugs are AOK!
Sanity rears it's ugly head.
Brilliant rebuttal.
DO you put out fires with a blow torch?
How anyone who calls themselves a conservative could be in favor of the "WAR ON DRUGS!!!!" (patriotic music fades in) is beyond me.
Maybe that the war on drugs makes less sense than alcohol prohibition. The author strikes me as no liberal, but probably a libertarian.
I think the author is simply being pragmatic. He asks questions seldom asked. What worked or didn't work in the past? How does the current phenomenon compare with past phenomena? What is working now and what isn't working in helping people avoid the pitfalls of drug addiction? Does enforcing ideology improve the situation or make it worse?
These questions are worthwhile, but usually get short shrift.
I am mostly against the useless WOD but the guy is wrong. Meth is nasty, nasty, nasty stuff... and it's everywhere.
I am mostly against the useless WOD but the guy is wrong. Meth is nasty, nasty, nasty stuff... and it's everywhere.
Yes, it's always for the children! Consider the cost though. Check out these links. Then let me know if you think the price is right.
The war on guns: Joel Miller explains how drug cops are killing 2nd Amendment.
Sorry about the dup post. My cable modem is on meth tonight.
Propoganda for the drug war is overblown. Sorry I didn't see anything in the excerpt which shows the correlation between crime and drugs. Is legalizing drugs the answer? I can definitely see an argument toward "soft" drugs such as pot, but I don't see the same for meth, crack or heroin.
by Benson B. Roe, MD
Benson Roe is Professor Emeritus and former Chair of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of California at San Francisco.
And "poison" is also a misleading shibboleth. The widespread propaganda that illegal drugs are "deadly poisons" is a hoax. There is little or no medical evidence of long term ill effects from sustained, moderate consumption of uncontaminated marijuana, cocaine or heroin. If these substances - most of them have been consumed in large quantities for centuries - were responsible for any chronic, progressive or disabling diseases, they certainly would have shown up in clinical practice and/or on the autopsy table. But they simply have not!
More than 20 years ago when I was removing destroyed heart valves from infected intravenous drug abusers I assumed that these seriously ill patients represented just the tip of the iceberg of narcotic abuse. In an effort to ascertain what proportion of serious or fatal drug-related disease this group represented, I sought information from the San Francisco Coroner. To my surprise he reported that infections from contaminated intravenous injections were the only cause of drug-related deaths he saw except for occasional deaths from overdoses. He confirmed the inference that clean, reasonable dosages of heroin, cocaine and marijuana are pathologically harmless. He asserted he had never seen a heroin user over the age of 50. My obvious conclusion was that they had died from their. habit but he was confident that they had simply tired of the drug and just quit. When asked if the same were basically true of marijuana and cocaine, he responded affirmatively. That caused me to wonder why these substances had been made illegal.
It is frequently stated that illicit drugs are "bad, dangerous, destructive" or "addictive," and that society has an obligation to keep them from the public. But nowhere can be found reliable, objective scientific evidence that they are any more harmful than other substances and activities that are legal. In view of the enormous expense, the carnage and the obvious futility of the "drug war," resulting in massive criminalization of society, it is high time to examine the supposed justification for keeping certain substances illegal. Those who initiated those prohibitions and those who now so vigorously seek to enforce them have not made their objectives clear. Are they to protect us from evil, from addiction, or from poison?
The concept of evil is derived from subjective values and is difficult to define. just why certain (illegal) substances are singularly more evil than legal substances like alcohol has not been explained. This complex subject of "right" and "wrong" has never been successfully addressed by legislation and is best left to the pulpit.
Addiction is also a relative and ubiquitous phenomenon. It certainly cannot be applied only to a short arbitrary list of addictive substances while ignoring. a plethora of human cravings - from chocolate to coffee, from gum to gambling, from tea, to tobacco, from snuggling to sex. Compulsive urges to fulfill a perceived need are ubiquitous. Some people are more susceptible to addiction than others and some "needs" are more addictive than others. Probably the most addictive substance in our civilization is tobacco - yet no one has suggested making it illegal.
As for prohibition, it has been clearly demonstrated that when an addictive desire becomes inaccessible it provokes irresponsible behavior to fulfill that desire. Education and support at least have a chance of controlling addiction. Deprivation only sharpens the craving and never works. Even in prison addicts are able to get their `fix.'
And "poison" is also a misleading shibboleth. The widespread propaganda that illegal drugs are "deadly poisons" is a hoax. There is little or no medical evidence of long term ill effects from sustained, moderate consumption of uncontaminated marijuana, cocaine or heroin. If these substances - most of them have been consumed in large quantities for centuries - were responsible for any chronic, progressive or disabling diseases, they certainly would have shown up in clinical practice and/or on the autopsy table. But they simply have not!
Media focus on the "junkie" has generated a mistaken impression that all uses of illegal drugs are devastated by their habit. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that the small population of visible addicts must constitute only a fraction of the $150 billion per year illegal drug market. This industry is so huge that it necessarily encompasses a very large portion of the ordinary population who are typically employed, productive, responsible and not significantly impaired from leading conventional lives. These drug users are not "addicts" just as the vast majority of alcohol users are not "alcoholics."
Is it not a ridiculous paradox to have laws to protect us from relatively harmless substances and not from the devastating effects of other substances that happen to be legal? It is well known that tobacco causes nearly a million deaths annually (in the US alone) from cancer, cardiovascular disease and emphysema; more than 350,000 die from alcohol-related cirrhosis and its complications and caffeine is the cause of cardiac and nervous system disturbances. These facts suggest that the public is being fraudulently misled into fearing the wrong substances and into complacency about hazardous substances by allowing their sale and even subsidization.
Our environment contains a plethora of hazards, of which recreational substances are much less important than many others. Recognizing the reality of consumer demand and the perspective of relative harm should make a strong case for alternatives to prohibition. Should we not have teamed from the failure of the Volstead Act of the 1920s and the current ubiquitous availability of illegal drugs that prohibition is the height of futility?
Is it not time to recognize that the " problem" is not the drugs but the enormous amounts of untaxed money diverted from the economy to criminals? The economic incentive for drug dealers to merchandise their product aggressively is a multi-billion dollar return which has a far more powerful effect to increase substance abuse than any enforcement program can possibly do to, constrain that usage. The hopeless challenge of drug crime is compounded by the parallel expansion of theft, crime, which is the principal economic resource to finance the drug industry. How can this be anything but a lose-lose situation for society?
We should look at the fact that a relatively low budget public education campaign has resulted in a significant decline in US consumption of both alcohol and tobacco during a period when a costly and intensive campaign to curtail illegal drugs only resulted in their increased usage. Is there a lesson to be heeded?
Of course there is. Scrap the nonsense of trying to obliterate drugs and acknowledge their presence in our society as we have with alcohol and tobacco. Legalization would result in:
Effort and funds can then be directed to educating the public about the hazards of all drugs.
Can such a change of attitude happen? Probably not, because the huge illegal drug industry has mountains of money for a media blitz and for buying politicians to sing the songs of "evil" and "danger" which is certain to kill any legislative attempt at legalization. Perhaps it will take some time before reality can prevail, but meanwhile we should at least do more to expose deception and to disseminate the truth.
> It's the problem identified by William Bennett, the
> former national drug czar and gambler.
Well, at least he didn't say "compulsive gambler", but
that gratuitous little dig torpedoed any chance that
the rest of the article would be mistaken for
dispassionate analysis (assuming the reader wasn't
already on bias alert because it's the NYT).
> "Using drugs," he wrote, "is wrong not simply because
> drugs create medical problems; it is wrong because
> drugs destroy one's moral sense. People addicted to
> drugs neglect their duties."
Same is true of perfectly legal alcohol. Same argument
was used to justify Prohibition. Same outcome - scofflaws,
drive by shootings, profits for organized and disorganized
crime, wasted (and often corrupt) law enforcement.
The question really is whether or not it's even constitutional for the federal government to be waging this 'war.' Regulating interstate commerce does not mean making things illegal. The commerce clause is intended to prevent the states from taxing each other unduly. Think of it like NAFTA but between the states of the union. Regulating commerce and determining the legality of certain substances are two very different things.
I'll check it out.
sure whatever. you know they do effect people's lives. That's why a war on drugs is needed. maybe it's been going on all wrong, but even pot can mess up a whole families situation. a tougher stance on all drugs needs to be made.
"I am mostly against the useless WOD but the guy is wrong. Meth is nasty, nasty, nasty stuff... and it's everywhere."
Not only is it everywhere, it makes users abolutely WHACKED! While the need for Coke and heroin "inspires" alot of crime, meth causes it. Speed Freaks are dangerous. Ask a cop who he fears most of all the users and chances are he'll tell you "the meth heads."
What we do have is the same thing we had during prohibition but it is done for drugs instead of Alcohol.
Legalize drugs and we get rid of many evils, we might gain a few but the ones we gain would in no way equal the evils we would lose.
We would lose gangs, or at least the ones with money. Without illegal drugs there would be no gangs, because the funding would dry up. We would lose drive by shootings, we would most likely see MS-13 beat a retreat back across the border because the only reason they are here is illegal drug money. We would lose many politicians because the source of their corruption would be gone. Illegal drug money causes many, many of our problems in this country.
I know, I will be flamed by the self righteous people who believe they, and our government, has the right to ban substances like this.
A lot of these same people still think we should outlaw alcohol again because for some reason they don't believe history or think we can do it better this time, much like the lefties think they can get communism right despite the fact it has failed the world over. Flame all you want, but I speak the truth. The only way we will ever win the so called war on drugs is to legalize them.
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