Drug War

The solution to drug addiction is not a war on drugs.

​If you are concerned over the devastation of addictive drug use as I am, please ask yourself what you would do if all drugs were made legal tomorrow. How much of your life would change? Personally, I have never used drugs other than pharmaceuticals post-surgery, drank alcohol, or even tasted coffee. For me, if all drugs were made legal tomorrow nothing would change, and the truth is that nothing would change for a significant number of Americans either.

We should have translated the lessons learned from the prohibition of alcohol, but we didn’t. I discuss the failed drug war specifically in my article on the border, but it is appropriate to mention here again that the first drive-by shooting was a direct result of alcohol prohibition, and the first gun restriction law in this country was a direct result of the same. The Prohibition of Alcohol Era was a disaster, and the Prohibition Era currently in this country is and continues to be a disaster! What is the disconnect that perpetuates the inability to see that the prohibition of a substance (driving a market “underground”) will inevitably lead to the blood and carnage of organized crime? We blame the cartels for existing, and yet we fuel their existence. Insanity.

​If we are sincerely interested in decreasing the pain and suffering surrounding drug addiction, we must look for actual solutions. We could take a lesson from Portugal because “everything you think you know about addiction is wrong.”