How to Solve the Drug Problem
Have I ever smoked dope? Why in the world would I want to? I don’t ever want to become mellow, or relaxed, or laid-back, or even tranquil. I don’t even like hanging out with relaxed and spaced-out people. I want all my friends on the edge with veins popping out of their arms, ready to dominate the world, or at least charge hell with a bucket of water. The only drug I’ll ever crave for is caffeine and a six-pack of Busch Light. That’s just my personal preference, but I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy, so to each their own.
I can’t even process the controversy about Medical Marijuana. How is this even on the ballot? If some doctor prescribes a drug, then by definition, it’s either dangerous, addictive, or both. Pretty much the only thing in a pharmacy that isn’t a threat to people is contraceptives, and come to think of it… I suppose even they are a threat to potential people. I mean, it’s not like Vicodin is something you want teenagers popping ad hoc, which is why it’s only available by prescription. Why sould cannabis pills be any different?
If Cannabis treats Glaucoma, then why is the voting public even discussing it? Why doesn’t the medical community weigh the drug’s pros and cons the way they do every other substance and either use it or lose it? What if it we had to go to the ballot box every time a new drug was invented? Is this the process we want to choose to approve every medical treatment?
I’ll tell you what I think makes sense to put on the ballot; an up or down vote on all-out legalization of drugs… period. Nothing would make me happier than to see the inner-city thugs bankrupted. Instead of cruising around in Cadillac’s and Escalade’s with chrome rims and thumping music, the gang-bangers might actually be forced to get a frickin’ job for once. I’m also sick-and-tired of supporting a bloated prison population. “The Land of the Free” has the highest per-capita prison population on the planet thanks to our failed, “War on Drugs”.
The people I know who smoke dope are all losers, and will probably all remain losers forever. You can’t outlaw stupidity. The demand for products to fry the human brain will always be there, so the only question is who makes money from the sale of the “grease” to do the frying.
Conversely, you can dump truck loads of drugs on the lawns of the folks who don’t smoke dope, and they still won’t take a puff. The people who don’t do drugs don’t for one reason and one reason only… they don’t want to. It sure as the world isn’t because they aren’t readily available. Prohibition didn’t work in the 1920’s, and it doesn’t work now.
If you think that making something illegal will deter its use, then you believe the government can successfully regulate human behavior. I’m of the opinion the government can NOT successfully do anything, so I prefer the market assumes that role.
We all know pot-heads. Most folks think these people can become productive citizens if the rest of us spend enough tax money rehabilitating them, chasing around Mexican drug-lords, and enriching street-thugs. Not me. My way to cure these people is the “Darwinian Method”. Let these folks buy all the dope they can smoke from legitimate businessmen, and then allow them to remove themselves from the gene pool.
If we want to control crime, we need to quit spending $50,000/head/year locking people in the golf resorts we call prisons, and start spending $50 on locking them up in stocks on the courthouse lawns. It’s important for kids to watch as people throw gourds and melons and rotten eggs at the prisoners.
“Is everybody that does drugs a bad person?” I assume so, but then I’m hardly an expert, and at the end of the day, that question misses the point. The real question is, “What is the proper role of government”? Does a free society tell other people what to eat, what to drink, when to go to bed, and what to wear? Am I going too far with that last question? Consider that the USA is the only non-Muslim country in the world that doesn’t allow 18-year-olds to drink. If we judged ourselves with the company we keep in that regard, then I say it’s high time we changed our counter-productive ways and gave freedom a try.
