A Rational discussion of the War On Drugs and Republican Policy
I know that anecdotes rarely if ever prove anything, but allow me to share a personal anecdote from my life which demonstrates a major failure of the War on Drugs.
Last year, about a week and a half before the NC State GOP Convention, I was helping a friend move into a third story apartment. I helped carry a dryer up to his apartment.
The next morning, I woke up with an intense pain in my lower back. The next day it got worse. I could feel my muscle groups locking in spasm, and after a quick diagnosis and a significant amount of research, I determined that I had slipped a disc.
By the third day, I could not move across a room without help, or a lot of things to hold on to.
For some background: I am a self employed network and Point Of Sale field service engineer. I was making great progress with my company until I dropped my life in 2007 to volunteer for Ron Paul. Money became very scarce, and I had no health insurance of any kind. I am not complaining - it was my own choice to go traipsing off to three states on a whim and a prayer.
After arriving at my diagnosis, I researched treatments. Intuitively, I thought I'd need a muscle relaxant to end the muscle spasm, and a pain killer to function until it could loosen and I could stretch out my muscles and my spine and heal up. My research on the internet confirmed this.
But I could not go to the drug store to buy 2 weeks of vicodin and a muscle relaxant.
After a week of being crippled with a slipped disk, I had to borrow money from my family to pay a doctor to tell me what I already knew: I had slipped (a light rupture) the L5-S1 disk, and the only difference between his scrip and mine, was that he added a steroid to promote healing.
So I buy the scrip myself, of my own money minus the Prednesone (I didn't want it) and three days layer I am on the podium at the NC State Convention running for RNC National Committeeman.
Were it not for the government regulation of drugs, I could have began proper treatment within 72 hours of the injury. Why must I be penalized for being intelligent and doing my research, into paying $250 dollars begging a signature for what I already knew?
I do know that my situation is not unique; although I was certainly over-affected on account of my financial situation, going a week between a ruptured disk and treatment, only 3 days before the state convention where I had an active role.
So what has the modern policy of drug regulation and prohibition done for me? If America were truly free, then I would have been free to treat myself. I say the failed and counter-productive War On Drugs must end. What say you?
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You really are a clueless moron.
ReplyDeleteThe War on Drugs is primarily about protecting innocent and law abiding Americans from street thug creeps with names like Raheem and Jamal from shooting, robbing, and murdering to perpetuate their illegal drug trade and habits.
If you aren't against that, then you aren't a real American. You're pro- street criminal and that would make you my enemy.
The War On Drugs is primarily about promoting a black market entrepreneurial system rife with racketeering, gangland violence, and streets bathed in blood.
ReplyDeleteToday, urban families have to send their children off to school not knowing if they will come back as the same child they sent out, or come back in a gang, strung out on some drug, or in a body bag.
The reason that situation exists is not the substances themselves, but the black market that had developed to satisfy the unabating demand.
I am sorry sir, but Americans deserve save communities. The same thing happened during Alcohol prohibition. We saw the rise of the Mafia, Al Capone, and we had events like the St Valentines Day Massacre.
Al least then they had enough respect for the rule of law to pass a Constitutional Amendment first!
But prohibition was repealed, the crime wave abated, and lo and behold there were FEWER drunks in the streets.
Drug addiction and drug abuse is a medical/psychological problem. If people could buy their medicines in an environment where the resellers were trained to recognize and treat addiction, I bet America's drug problem would drop in half in a single year.
If you truly care about reducing drug addiction and the damage it does to society, then you cannot possibly be opposed to seeking another way. Because the current way has not worked. The problem is worse today than it has ever been.
It is easier for a kid in high school to get marijuana or meth or cocaine than it is for him to get a beer. IMHO, that should say something right there.
Perhaps you would prefer continuing to pursue a system that doesn't work, pays off special interests, creates violence in our urban and mostly minority neighborhoods, and absorbs $billions upon $billions of dollars in taxpayer money every year?
I for one would like to seek a real solution to the plague of American abuse and addiction, and I say we start by abandoning what has demonstrably failed, and come up with a rational policy.
I support an aggressive pro-individual health-care freedom act.