Published: May 10, 2008 12:19 am            

Letter: Drug problem is a matter of addiction

Editor:

As with my April 7, letter, this is about our worst war — on ourselves. This long-festering, long-suffering drug war, which needn’t have ever been, if cooler heads ever prevailed. Yes, our culture has a tremendous drug problem, but it’s mostly due to our outrageous, outlandish laws. No, banning drugs outright isn’t the answer. Likely even most of our doctors and police officials would agree, if they didn’t have to answer to our ever stupid government. Why is our government always so stupid? We banned alcohol during Prohibition and it spawned one of our largest crime rates. Whenever something is deemed “illegal,” more likely more of us will want it. (Why is this? Why is “illegal” more tempting?) However, this is really about our drinks. Yes, smoking is terrible, but drinks are infinitely worse. Anyone who regularly imbibes beer, champagne, whiskey, wine, etc. is a graver danger to our culture than smokers. Why? Because all drinks mess with our minds. Any drink that clouds our perception of reality is bad. How many of our prominent citizens attend lodge meetings and have their six packs of Busch, Miller, Budweiser? How many men and women “loosen” themselves up or go overboard at these meetings? It might be interesting to survey them. We’ve got more drunks on the road, killing more people.

Someone wondered why I’ve gone on this rant about drunks. Well, I read Sue Grafton’s great Kinsey Milhone novel “D is for Deadbeat,” about a drunk driver who kills a carload of people (including three children), and he seeks redemption. This book really enlightened me, again. (All of Grafton’s books are worth the trip.) So, drinkers are infinitely worse than smokers. Yes, smoking is a great bother, but smoking can’t cloud the smoker’s perception of reality. What if we could get all these drinkers off the road? We might save hundreds, thousands of lives a year, including the drunks. And I think it’s very hypocritical for those who drink to preach to our children about drugs. Anyone who regularly drinks is in no position to harp on drug dependency. If one can’t lay down the bottle or can, altogether, they have problems. I’ve said that Gore Vidal said that in a free culture, a certain amount of people would be prone to addiction. Well, in Newsweek’s March 3, cover story, we learn that only about one in 10 of us is prone to addiction to any drug, because of a gene variant. That’s not so terribly bad — except for the addicted. I’d say those who are hypocrites are far worse — those who lie to us and cheat us. I’ve said, I’ve never touched a narcotic; if I’m prone to addiction, I don’t want to find out the hard way. We’ve got far too many addictions already. I had talked on marijuana. I’ve chatted with a few people who agree with me: one of the most ridiculous uses of police power is arresting people for growing cannabis plants. Yes, marijuana is “illegal,” but only because they don’t have an active lobby, like alcohol and tobacco. Turning marijuana users into criminals is stupid. Our hard-working police officers have much more important things to do, like chasing down robbers, murderers, thieves, etc. How much longer will our culture put up with our insane drug war? The answer may be up to our more sensible citizens.

Calvin Walker

Mt. Vernon

        

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