I'm going to keep this short and simple in response to [the letter] “Let's Get Outraged, Folks” [Aug. 18, Xpress]. Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
It's time to apply that wisdom to the problem at hand: the war on drugs.
The war on drugs fits Einstein's definition perfectly in that regard. Our “elected leaders” keep throwing more and more debt/money into building more and more prisons to house more and more nonviolent offenders. Most of these prisons are privately owned, for-profit facilities built and kept on the taxpayer’s dime; [they] now house more people per capita than China's prisons.
Hey! This isn't working. It's worth repeating that this isn't working until everyone has the “Aha” moment. I won't trouble the reader with statistics, other than to say that the more tax dollars that are spent to “fight the war” the more addicts there are per capita. Is there a link? Of course there is.
Do drugs lead to crime? Only in an atmosphere of prohibition.
If it's been said once its been said a thousand times: lift the prohibition and drug-related crime will decrease dramatically.
Treatment technologies and centers will thrive. Most addicts don't want to be addicts. They are people like you and me.
There are plenty of proven treatments that can help them lift themselves from the clutches of addiction.
Bottom line: Prisons make beaucoups dollars for the elite who are running this country into the ground, devastating families and creating career criminals who throw rocks through car windows trying to get their next fix.
Wake up and just say NO to prohibition.
— Naiya Cassidy
Asheville
Well, Naiya, I gotta hand it to you for writing an intelligible response to the letter I wrote last week. The only two responses I received were well, idiotic.
That said, I’m not sure that I agree with you. I don’t know that legalizing crack or meth will accomplish what we would like: the cessation of drug abuse.
True, British Columbia has had good success with limiting the impact of heroin addiction by legalizing care and treatment, by providing clean needles and by changing the rhetoric around addiction. It’s true most folks do not want to be addicts. But do we really want to say that drug addiction is ok? That we tolerate it? That we will provide you with the tools to do it?
I don’t know that I can get behind that kind of course of action. And I don’t know that that will reach the desired end.
Oh, and if I may, to the two yahoos who responded to my article last week.
1. Crime in Asheville is irrespective of where you live.
2. Because crime is here, does that mean we should just accept it? I’m all for being careful. I’m not all for living with it.
[b]I don’t know that legalizing crack or meth will accomplish what we would like: the cessation of drug abuse. [/b]
Neither has making them illegal.
Anyone who expects to stop drug abuse through legislation making it legal or illegal is awfully naive. To truly come close to that goal would require some serious improvements to the over-all health of our larger community. But that’s too much work for most of us.
The letter-writer’s point is that many of the negative aspects of drug abuse are directly linked to it being criminalized.
The war on drugs failed. You cant legislate morality.
Make drugs ‘legal’, regulate them like alcohol and tobacco, and you will see an immediate lowering of the crimes associated with acquiring products of an underground, un-regulated economy.
Making drugs illegal only provides income for criminals and organized crime. and forces our problems into the shadows.
Thanks for two well reasoned arguments for ending the drug prohibition.