Howdowedealwiththedrugproblem.docVIP

How Do We Deal with the Drug Problem? Drugs It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect the drug will have on the taker. This will require heroic honesty. Don’t say that marijuana is addictive and dangerous when it is neither----unlike “speed,” which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which is addictive and difficult to kick. For the record, I have tried almost every drug and liked none, disproving the popular theory that a whiff of opium will enslave the mind. Nevertheless many drugs are bad and they should be told why in a sensible way. Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each man has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbor’s pursuit of happiness. Now one can hear the warning rumble begin: If everyone is allowed to take drugs everyone will and we shall end up a race of Zombies. Alarming thought. Yet, it seems most unlikely that any reasonably sane person will become a drug addict if he knows in advance what addiction is going to be like. Is everyone reasonably sane? No. some people will always become drug addicts just as some people will always become alcoholics, and it is just too band. Every man, however, has the power and should have the legal right to kill himself if he chooses. But since most men don’t, they won’t be mainliners either. Nevertheless, forbidding people things they like or think they might enjoy only makes them want those things all the more. This psychological insight is, for some mysterious reason, always denied our governors. It is a lucky thing for the American moralist that we have no public memory of anything that happened last Tuesday. No one in Washington today recalls what happened during the years alcohol was f