Posted on 07/04/2006 5:20:13 PM PDT by neverdem
Two years ago, my 23-year-old brother became addicted to painkillers after breaking his leg and undergoing several operations to repair it.
Last year, while he was checking into rehab for abusing OxyContin, I was drafting a chapter in my new book calling for drug legalization. It was a difficult moment to believe in individual liberty: I felt firsthand the effects of what it's like when people make bad decisions. I saw how hard my brother struggled to get clean, first moving forward and then backsliding again into substance abuse.
One of the more compelling arguments for the war on drugs is that if we allow people to freely buy and use all sorts of currently illegal drugs, some people will end up becoming addicted when they otherwise would have been deterred by criminal penalties.
This, however, is a false choice: It ignores the fact that many people are - as my brother was before treatment - already addicted to harmful substances. Local, state and federal governments directly spend more than $40 billion a year on what's typically called the war on drugs.
Virtually all of that money is spent on trying to interdict drugs as they enter the country or arresting drug users and drug sellers. Our current aim of preventing people from becoming addicted to harmful substances misses the mark.
A better focus - and one that would eliminate the violence and crime associated with black markets and reduce the social harms of addiction - would be to ask: What's the best way we can encourage people who have drug problems to seek treatment?
Baltimore has been a prime example of how successful we can be when we stop worrying about drug abuse and start worrying about drug abusers.
In 1999, Baltimore and the Maryland General Assembly began a...
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
Pot absolutely should be legal. It is ridiculous to criminalize it - it would be a lot more effective for pain that prescription drug addictions. We're spending too much money on this war on drugs - we should get rid of it.
Drug policy should focus on helping addicts, not jailing them (unless they're Republicans).
No way. To treat an addict rather than jail would be the humanitarian thing to do. Humanitarian responses are reserved for palestinian terrorists and parts of africa.
go figure
Leave it to the Baltimore Sun to come up with meaningless tripe about how to deal with crimes related to addiction.
Answer is simple. Deal with both issues at the same time. Jail the offender and require (force) them to attend recovery meetings/programs while they're incarcerated. Happens all the time. It'll either be "a take" or it won't. Just like what happens in "real life."
There's a very old adage that contains more wisdom than any of the words written by so-called addiction specialists, and it's quite simple. Most good answers are. Here tis:
"Sobriety isn't for people who need it, it's for people who want it." That's a wrap, folks. Case closed.
And the addiction to crack, coke, meth, etc......isn't?
Jailing users of drugs is a huge waste of resources. I can understand jailing the sellers...kind of like jailing people who produce moonshine...it's a licnensing and commerce issue. How about we fine them...just like speeders.
What would you propose to do that hasn't been tried already? If it's just more of the same, that's not cutting it.
Are you saying legalize crack, cocaine, meth, pcp, lsd, etc? While we are at it, lets just do away with the entire judicial code, people ignore the laws anyway don't they?
As I wrote: "What would you propose to do that hasn't been tried already? If it's just more of the same, that's not cutting it."
I wouldn't write off the entire judicial code, just those parts that generate profits for organized crime, generate funds for our islamofascist enemies, create more hostility and foreign policy dilemmas from Afghanistan to Bolivia, with many countries in between, corrupt law enforcement and cause less respect for our Constitution with the rights that it is supposed to guarantee.
IMHO, if there was ever a fools errand, it's the war on drugs as it is currently constituted. It was promoting a nanny/police state even before September 11, 2001. It has corrupted enough branches of government, if not all of them, so thoroughly that physicians are now brought to court if they are arbitrarily deemed to prescribe too little or too much. The DEA now de facto practices medicine.
The current arrangement that permits law enforcement to do almost anything it wants to, especially because it's for the children, is nothing more than the alcohol prohibition on steroids and exponentially worse. It's a law enforcement full employment program with unconstitutional property seizures without due process and a simultaneous war on guns.
The discussion has become so distorted that folks can't see the forest for the trees. It's generally recognized that the prohibition of coca and opium led to the black market distribution of the more expensive and concentrated derivatives, i.e. cocaine and heroin. Hallucinogens were also available naturally. Chemistry is here to stay. All other things being equal including criminal penalties, criminals tend to maximize profits. There's more bang for the buck with a concentrated product.
IMHO, I think most would agree that their increased cost led to intravenous drug abuse which also happens to spread disease either directly by needle sharing or having sexual relations. Yet when any politician or public health advocate proposes needle exchange programs, which have routinely demonstrated decreased incidence in the spread of HIV/AIDS, they are routinely denounced by political opportunists of almost all stripes.
The Founding Fathers had the wisdom to recognize the folly that is human nature when they wrote the Constitution for a federal government with limited powers. IMHO, if they were here today, they would congratulate themselves for the foresight to have written the Second Amendment in order to secure the liberty that they originally sought when they affirmed to, "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor," in the Declaration of Independence.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Benjamin Franklin
I can see sacrificing some liberties temporarily because we are at war, but not forever because fools might kill themselves by their own hands. Rant off.
Do you have problems with city, state, local laws against opiate drug usage?
Not as much, but I still think they cause about as much trouble and corruption as the harm they may prevent. I just don't think you can legislate morality with vice laws.
That said, I was disappointed with SCOTUS in the Lawrence v. Texas from a public health point of view re: HIV/AIDS. They didn't even look at it from that perspective, yet the gov't restricts liberties from the public health point of view even when the science is bogus, i.e. environmental tobacco smoke.
Well imho that leaves only the influence of religion on people. And with that influence steadily fading in our society, I fear the worst.
Shudder......I hate to think of a free, open and totally unfettered drug taking society. I wonder if anyone will work at all, other than to steal to satisfy their next fix?
If someone wants to destroy their life with a controlled substance, what’s it to me? As long as they are adults, understand the consequences of their actions, and break no other laws I don’t think the state should directly interfere. It’s their body and they can do with it what they wish. Legalize hard drugs and treat them like Alcohol or Tobacco.
If someone chooses death over life – and let’s face it, that’s what a heroin addict does – I can lament that decision, but I can’t change it.
Every time I hear or read stories, they say the U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the entire world.
Here's a Google of polls united states believe belief in God
Recent polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 96% of the public says they believe in God or some form of Supreme Being, roughly the same number as in a 1965 survey cited in the Time piece.
Take heart! Don't be discouraged because the left and the aetheists still get the lion's share of media attention. They can't help but give doom and gloom, not to mention treason.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.