|
We’ve got it backwards when it comes to our flourishing drug problem. Though they’re all social predators, drug users spawn far more misery than dealers, distributors, and cartels combined. It’s the users who milk our healthcare system, prey on parents, families, and neighborhoods, abdicate responsibility, seek treatment on somebody else’s dollar, and fund the violence of their suppliers. Instead of legalizing resources, we should persecute users.
We already do by pretending we’re good at drug treatment. The number of addicts recapturing normalcy on a lasting basis is embarrassingly small. Prevention, not recovery, marks a compassionate culture.
The drug war is a sham. As long as there’s user demand, suppliers will outgun authorities. Fighting drugs in foreign lands when we’ve lost control of our own borders and communities is comedic. The real struggle is right here.
The reality that more people die from lawful than illicit drugs mocks legalization fantasies. Super-regulated painkillers remain an easily obtained drug-of-choice for teens and adults. Legalization doesn’t work in Portugal, Holland, or the local methadone clinic and it won’t work here.
Sweden offers a model of what will. For the same reason super-tough DUI laws there dramatically cut alcohol related traffic deaths, prompt, strong, and consistent penalties will discourage new drug users here. A civil society treats drug addiction. A smart, mature and loving society intercepts drug addiction. Stopping the recruitment of potential drug users and breaking a puppy from peeing on the carpet require similar dedications.
Asheville is a haven for carpet stainers and chemistry plays a big role in keeping downtown weird. Would that our police had the political support to walk a drug dog through Occupy Asheville. It’s also no coincidence that Asheville’s public housing shelters drug activity and damaged children.
Jail should be Plan-B. Invasive alternative sentencing, random drug screens as a condition of public services, the structure and accountability of drug courts, and other meaningful community based penalties are the beginnings of Plan-A.
Hard drugs merit our strongest attentions, but it’s folly to assign innocence to marijuana. Like morphine, it suppresses natural healing. Marijuana is highly addictive and makes users dumb and dumber. Smoking weed, like casual sex, is fun, but not remotely connected to innocence.
We sympathize with users to their peril and our own. They know the difference between tough love, the only real love, and enabling. Culturists challenge drug users, thieves, and murderers for exactly the same reasons.
(400 words) Carl Mumpower is a practicing psychologist and a former U.S. congressional candidate and Asheville city council member. Contact him at drmumpower@thecandidconservative.com
Click here for the temporary Asheville Citizen-Times editorial link...
Trackback(0)
 |
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
