[Mb-hair] Re: The Americas Need A New Bold Policy On Drugs

[Jim Burns]

The older  I get, the more I'm convinced that there's potentally very
little difference between my wanting to have my Jack Daniels on the
rocks, every once in a while, and some one else wanting to do their,
within a sense of reason, drug of choice.

There's really no reason, perhaps, why someone shouldn't be able to go
to their physician, and say, "I'd like to do a little Coke this weekend,
Doc."  With a PRESCRIPTION, there could be some sort of control over the
process.

You'd remove the black market and the billions earned by organized crime
(and the related violent crimes that go with the current infrastructure
of the illicit drug economy).

On top of everything else, you'd have a marvelous new tax revenue
stream!

It would also help, I believe, deal with the problem that NO ONE in
America wants to talk about; the problem tha no one has wanted to talk
about for over thirty years:

Children doing drugs.

Do you have any idea how many fourteen year-olds are going to part of
their high school day, high?

When you remove the hysteria, the arguemnt can be made that there really
isn't much of a problem--once you remove the illegality, with an adult
"doing drugs."

But we have completely failed as a nation to confront why so many MIDDLE
and UPPER class youths like getting stoned...

Legalizing drugs, implementing some type of prescription program, would
make it easier to deal with, what to me, is the greatest sadness.

You'd still have abuse, much as with teenage alcoholism, but if you
removed the glamour of an "underground" transaction, things might be,
much diferent.

Adults, of course, should be allowed to chose what they wish to do, as
long as it harms no one else... 

There's another major problem with revising our country's drug laws.

People are marking money on putting folks in jail.

Forget municipalities.

If the trend towards privatization of prisons continues....

(PRIVATE companies are now in the busines of running prisons, in parts
of the United States)

There will be a price tag on the back of any potental arrest.

And there will be many folks unhappy at any law-change that promsies to
put fewer people behind bars.

It'll be bad for business.


Jim Burns