[Vision2020] Drunks, drugs, and the empathy factor

[Joan Opyr]

Hello, Dave,

You won't get any argument from me re: the legalization of drugs.  Let's legalize them, tax them, and start selling them out of the liquor store next door to Howard Hughes and the laundromat.  I would say that we could then dedicate the revenues raised to treatment, but we see how well that worked with the tobacco settlements.  The money went largely to balance bloated state budgets.   

I would add one caveat to your lecture, Dave (or possibly two).  We can trace the so-called War on Drugs back much further than Reagan.  Nixon signed into law several bills that criminalized use, and he, in turn, was simply following in the footsteps of the late twenties', early thirties' crackdown on cocaine.  The War on Drugs has worked about as well as Prohibition.  A lot of users in jail; a lot of organized crime lords with billion dollar fortunes.  And still, crack, and coke, and heroin, and Ecstasy, and meth as far as the eye can see.  There's nothing you can't get right here in little Moscow, ID.  Hell, there's nothing you can't get in jail.

Now, as to my other caveat -- you declare that what Bush has or has not learned from his experience is beyond my ability to know.  With all due respect, Dave, I call bullshit.  Actions speak louder than words, and if you'll take a look at the Bush budget cuts that Mark Solomon posted to this list a week or so ago, you'll find that drug treatment programs are scheduled for a very nasty hit.  Now, can I see inside Bush's heart?  No.  (That skill, it would seem, belongs to Bush alone.  Remember how he looked into Vladimir Putin's heart and saw that it was pure, sweet, and on the level?  Works well, doesn't it, this cardiac, Oval Office, X-Ray business?)  I can see, however, that one very rich user escaped the consequences of his actions because of his last name, his family fortune, and his lucky, lucky connections.  I can see that a powerful white guy can snort until he's forty and rise to the highest office in the land.  And I can see that he does not use this experience and the bully pulpit he inherited to argue that users can be redeemed; he has not used it to insist that drug treatment programs work better than incarceration; and, finally, he has not used his experience and his power to call an end to the wasteful, pointless, destructive War on Drugs.  I don't see any difference, in fact, between George W. Bush and Bill Clinton on this issue.  As Mr. Bush is both a reformed user and a born-again Christian, I think there ought to be a difference.  A big, compassionate (if not conservative) difference.   

Now, just an FYI that might be of general interest: Alcoholics Anonymous -- one of the first faith-based treatment programs -- doesn't have a 15% success rate.  No one knows for certain what their success rate is because they don't publish statistics.  An internal memo (acquired by none other than Penn & Teller for their HBO show, Bullshit) suggests that AA's success rate is about 5%, exactly the same rate as no treatment at all.  And yet this is the program that is most often mandated by the courts.  I think that's a problem.  A big, faith-based initiative kind of problem.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment

PS: Whatever is in Mr. Bush's heart, I'm just glad I'm not Laura.  My pretzel bill would be through the roof. Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
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