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BS. The idea of drug zombies is nothing more than drug war propaganda with absolutely nothing in empirical evidence to support it. The idea of "precrime" is so foreign and abhorrent to a free society it hardly bears mentioning.

Three of my friends are LEOs, two are sheriff's deputies, and one a suburban municipal cop, all in disparate areas of the country... All of them tell me the very same thing wrt crack/meth. Burglaries and petty thefts increase exponentially as users increase. This is extremely easy to see in rural areas where crime is rather low prior to the arrival of "kitchens" in the area.

They have no reason to lie to me, or to promote any propaganda. I also know the local LEOs pretty well, and the local street. Without a doubt, it is the users jonzin' for a fix that are behind most of the theft here.

And sitting here, I can think of five kids I know personally who have become "drug zombies"... One particularly who had her two children illegitimately (at age 15), and then lost them to the state because she was not capable of caring for them because she was stoned out of her mind all the time. She has been convicted twice of felony theft and B&E, and also illegally selling prescription narcotics... all to support her meth habit.

All of the kids I am talking about were great kids - Bright, out-going, full of life. All were above average in grades until they hit the party scene. All of them now have illegitimate children, and have been through detox at least once, have utterly destroyed themselves and their families, and of them all, only one has a chance in hell of turning it around, and that is a small chance at that.

You may cry BS all you like, but the impact of drugs on this country is deep and wide, and I dare say you will find it hard to find a single family anywhere that has not been damaged by drug abuse in a very intimate way. It is insidious and pervasive, and is not limited to the user, ever.

They have no reason to lie to me, or to promote any propaganda.

Please. Law enforcement is the least reliable entity. Their jobs depend on the War on Drugs. There are certainly people who ruin their lives on drugs, but people ruin their lives on bunches of other stuff too. And guess what, it's their lives to ruin.

I don't think anyone will argue against the proposition that meth is horribly destructive. The question is whether prohibition is an effective way of minimizing its impact on individual lives and on society at large, and the empirical evidence is that it isn't.

Prohibition kills effective regulation. Do you see illegal liquor stores on the block where the meth labs are? No, because licensed establishments can be told where to locate. Do you see crime waves carried out by drunks who need a fix? No, because they can obtain their drug legally, and have a disincentive to break the law. Meth addicts are already criminals by virtue of their addiction, so that line is already crossed.

Prohibition also makes rehabilitation more difficult if not impossible, first by making addicts afraid to seek treatment for fear of getting busted, and then by sucking up all the available funding for law enforcement, leaving none for rehab.

The kids you know who are addicts -- obviously, the threat of prison hasn't kept them from becoming addicts. Would imprisonment help them kick? Maybe, but it usually doesn't. If the goal is to prevent addiction, it certainly would help to devote resources to -- wait for it -- helping addicts, rather than devoting unlimited resources to punishing them and treating rehab as an afterthought.

Meth is a creature of the war on drugs.

Absent the war, I doubt that it would either exist or be a problem.