Voices: Drug Warfare
Will our government officials have to dance in the streets of the capital decorated only with semi-automatic rifles before we admit they've lost their minds?
With each new desperate attempt put forth by the "War on Drugs," it becomes more and more apparent that public health and safety are not the concerns by which decisions are made.
In March, the Supreme Court ruled that innocent residents of public housing can rightfully be evicted because of the drug use of any co-resident or guest on the property or blocks away. Grandma's innocent? It doesn't matter - if she can't control her family, she's a threat.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is spending millions on ineffective and suspect propaganda accusing teenage drug dabblers of funding terrorists. Meanwhile, Bush condones the Afghan poppy harvest so that the war torn country's economy might stabilize and better ward off terrorism. Wait a minute, what?
OxyCotin is one of the few drugs strong enough to reduces or even eliminate pain without also causing nausea or damage to vital organ. Yet because of its abuse by addicts (who will find a way to their fix with out with out the drug), OxyCotin is being kept out of the hands of thousands of legitimately needy patients. States like Vermont have banned it altogether while other states have scared doctors so badly that dosages have been slashed and patients have been refused treatment.
When 69 percent of voters in the District of Columbia approved a measure to legalize the medical use of marijuana in 1998, Congress quickly stepped forward with the Barr Amendment, successfully blocking the implementation and preventing any future law reducing criminal penalties for any Schedule I controlled substance. It wasn't until last week that the amendment was finally overturned as unconstitutional. Duh.
Why do our legislators think they know better than our doctors? "Marijuana is not medicine," our lawmakers insist. Then why are so many doctors willing to prescribe it? What would happen if sick people started smoking pot and actually began to feel better - suffering fewer side effects with little debilitation?
Humans have been using plants to cure sickness and ease suffering since before the term medicine was even coined. Western medicine has ridiculed the use of natural medicine over chemical and technological medicine ever since healing became a profitable industry. Now that natural and non-Western medicines are becoming profitable as well, we are seeing their gradual return to acceptance.
In defense of its latest ad campaign, the ONDCP asserts "Americans must set norms that reaffirm the values of responsibility and good citizenship while dismissing the notion that drug use is consistent with individual freedom."
Since when are my decisions on what to do or not to do with my body not a matter of freedom? This is the twisted logic with which they twist our minds - be responsible, be a good citizen, but be sure to pick up Whoppers for the whole family on your way home from Wal-Mart. Don't grow your drugs, be a good consumer and buy them from the pharmaceutical companies.
Two-thirds of the $20 billion we are spending annually in the war on drugs goes to interdiction, eradication and law enforcement. We need to re-route our limited tax dollars away from users and focus solely on addicts and abusers. We need to treat the underlying causes of addiction - the source of our collective and individual pain whether it be mental discomfort, domestic and sexual violence, or the countless other social ills that have led the insured to Prozac, Xanax, Zoloft and other trademarked anti-depressants.
Strict incarceration penalties of minor recreational users and hyperbolic advertisements are not only failing to bring an end to the drug problem, they are making a laughing stock of our country. Our citizens need better reasons to feel good about being alive than Capitalism has been able to provide.
If the United States can't win the war against its self-inflicted angst and suffering, how could it ever hope to win the war against the seemingly more foreign and elusive enemy of terrorism.
-- alicia grega-pikul, 11 April 2002
