Drugs

Yesterday I read somewhere that our current Drug Czar (whoever he is) announced that those who grow marijuana are terrorists. So how about those who smoke or eat it? They must be terrorists as well, or at least seen as supporting terrorists. If this is so, then at least this part of the war on terror must be seen as unusually successful, just look at the hundreds of thousands of citizens incarcerated for pot. The fact that their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, are disrupted and sometimes ruined all for naught apparently bothers no one in the drug enforcement business. What I want to know is how someone like a Drug Czar gets selected in the first place. As near as I can tell they must look for the most ignorant, ill-informed, and rigid people they can find. They continue to spread the most ridiculous lies about marijuana, I can only guess because they really don't know anything about it and, in fact, don't seem to want to know anything about it. There is no compelling reason Marijuana should not be as legal as liquor and tobacco. This has been known for years and years, and yet some cling to the absurd claims made about this common weed. There is no space here to delve into this in detail but the facts are readily available if anyone wants to find out the truth.

I have always believed marijuana should be legal. Now, after careful thought on the subject (at least careful for me) I have concluded that all drugs should be legal. The so-called drug problem is a purely medical problem that should be handled between a doctor and a patient. It is not a political problem although that is what it has become. Not only is it the case that people's lives are being ruined by their use of drugs (who among us does not use one or more drugs routinely), but there are others whose lives are being harmed if not ruined by their inability to get the drugs they actually need. Doctors have become so fearful of prescribing drugs of certain kinds to certain patients they refuse to do it even though they know full well the patients would be better off for it. The benefits of legalizing drugs would far outweigh any deleterious effects. The fact that hemp cannot be grown in the United States has to be one of the single most absurd laws ever conceived. When I was a child none of the drugs now proscribed were prohibited, even housewives routinely used them, as did many others. Our current drug laws are no more than another failed case of prohibition, causing many to be labeled as criminals and others to be denied adequate medical care. They are, in short, ridiculous and unnecessary. In this country, where the blind continue to lead the blind, and to be stupid and uninformed seems to be no handicap to holding office, don't expect anything worthwhile to be achieved. We just continue on year after year in our abysmal ignorance and seem to take pride in it.

LKBIQ:

"If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them--peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances."
Sir Winston Churchill