Monday, January 30, 2012

Drugs...

Much fear is conjured up in the hearts of social conservatives at the mention of repealing drug laws. Instantly, they see images of crackheads and heroine addicts roaming every street, panhandling for drug money and stealing the copper pipes from plumbing systems all across this great land. As soon as the ban is lifted, our children, friends, spouses and even our selves will loose all sense of responsible behavior and become heavily addicted to hard drugs.


It is sad how easily we give into the notion that the government must prohibit something for our own safety. This has always been ineffective and in many cases extremely counter productive. One only needs to look at the enormous black market and gang activities that grew from alcohol prohibition and the enormous spike in drug usage as more and more restrictions were made in the past 60 years.


The problem is not that there aren't enough laws but we have been slowly losing our sense of personal accountability and responsibility. We have given up the healthy local community interaction and the charitable and educational responsibilities that go with it for government quick fixes in an effort to find a sort of "silver bullet" legislation that will end our drug consumption problems once and for all.

In removing those local influences of the community, for the ineffective mandates of Federal government, all we have done is give up more of those essential liberties that Ben Franklin warned us about for the temporary safety we were warned against. The only thing we have gained is a new outlet for government control in our lives. It sounds like a noble idea to rid the world of meth addiction through the crafty plans of our Federal government but has only proven to be a pipe dream. No matter how good the intentions of the Nanny State, they have only agitated he problem. Sixty years ago, we had a problem with people smoking marijuana and taking "bennies" and those instances were fairly rare. At that point in our history, we started trying to prohibit our way out of the problem. Look at ourselves today in contrast. Not only does our government want to pass tougher drug laws but they have extended their reach into what we eat for food. There are now movements that want to prohibit your fast food consumption and make sure you are eating a healthy diet.  Until we take back these responsibilities at the most local levels, we will not solve the problem.

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