AHS Views

A recent letter to the editor of the Empire Tribune is, once again, advocating legalization of drugs. He says prohibition of drugs, not the drugs themselves, are responsible for our drug problem. He references Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, so may be involved in law enforcement himself.

I can well imagine the frustration of law enforcement in handling the drug problem – but I think giving up and deciding to make something legal when it ruins so many lives is a real cop out. No pun intended.

He also said that before prohibition people didn’t overdose. There may be some statistics on that, I don’t know, but they wouldn’t have much credibility from my viewpoint since it’s hard to know how good the records were back in those days. And I don’t know that whatever statistics are available were properly analyzed either. Regardless, people don’t overdose because it’s illegal to take drugs – that implies that they did it on purpose. “Geez, if this were legal I wouldn’t accidentally take enough of it to kill myself.”

Legal or illegal doesn’t really matter. All you have to do is look at the rise in prescription drug addiction to know that. These drugs are completely legal - you go to your doctor to get them. But there are more people showing up in drug rehab centers for prescription drug addiction help than for street drugs these days.

Some of them have also moved onto other drugs. People who became addicted to OxyContin after getting a prescription from their doctor, for example, sometimes turn to heroin when they can no longer get OxyContin legally. Heroin costs a fraction of the price charged for OxyContin when you get it on the street.

Did prohibition of drugs cause their OxyContin addiction? Hardly. It has nothing to do with it. They got addicted because the drugs are addictive. Period.

Maybe it’s true that some people wouldn’t take drugs if they were legal – but I would bet those people are few and far between. The majority would still experiment – just like kids who take medicine out of their parents’ medicine cabinets and dump them in a bowl at a party with a bunch of friends who also brought their parents’ drugs. Do they think they’re doing something illegal? Probably not. They think the drugs are safe because they came from a doctor and probably have no concept that what they’re doing is illegal.

And some of them will get hooked. Will they get hooked because drugs are illegal? No, they’ll get hooked because the drugs are addictive and because they like the way the drugs make them feel.

The writer of the letter to the editor said people should be allowed to do what they want when it comes to drugs. That it’s their life and no one, including the government, has a right to interfere with it.

Unfortunately, in this regard, we do not live alone. Everything we do affects others. The police, of all people, should know that. Is legalizing drugs going to make the mother whose neglected children are being taken away by social services any less stoned?

If the fault lies anywhere in the legal system it’s with the lack of rehabilitation. Insisting on addiction help services for drug-related crime, especially of a non-violent nature, could actually change things. It would also help if there was some form of real rehabilitation of prisoners in general.

What do you think about this issue of legalizing drugs?