This country is so hung up on drugs that it can't see beyond the end of its nose. Let's just look at it from an economic standpoint. How many billions of dollars have been spent on the "war on drugs" over the past 40 years or so? And, still, is there anyone in this country who wants drugs who can't easily find them?
I'm not personaLLY convinced whether drugs are inherently good or bad. They are, to put it simply, a fact of life in this country. Some Scandinavian countries, most noteably Sweden, accepted that inevitable reality decades ago and, instead of populating their prisons with every "head" they caught using or dealing, they took the radical step of making drugs, as well as treatment programs, legally available in state clinics. As a consequence, they decriminalized drug use, and in so doing, they made it unprofitable to clandestine suppliers. So, there are virtually no muggings or robberies or murders in Sweden perpetrated by drug users, and absolutely none by drug suppliers, because the state is the supplier at a cost they can't compete with.
Contrast that system with the one in place in the good ol' US of A, thanks to the religious right and others who insist on fighting "evil" at every turn, which hasn't made even a small dent in drug use, nor in the violence perpetuated on innocent citizens who have a bit of money in their wallets and put themselves in vulnerable situations, nor in the number of users and suppliers who are invarcerated at the expense of the taxpayers, and it's easy to see which is the better system.
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"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."
Clarence Darrow |