Pubdate: Thu, 24 Jan 2008
Source: Montgomery Advertiser (AL)
Copyright: 2008 The Advertiser Co.
Contact: http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/customerservice/letter.htm
Website: http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1088
Note: Letters from the newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority
Author: Loretta Nall

MILITARY TACTIC NO USE AGAINST DRUGS

I read with dismay and disgust the story "Iraq vet uses military
tactics to fight drugs." This approach is wrong on so many levels.

There is no sane, logical explanation for ever placing an Iraq war
veteran, who might have a real bad case of PTSD, in charge of
provocative, rebellious, adolescent children. That is just asking for
trouble.

I am used to soldiers coming out of combat and being hired as drug
SWAT team officers, which is a horrible idea, but placing them in
schools? That has to be the worst idea ever.

How long until Principal G.I. Joe has a flashback and decides to
engage in hand-to-hand combat with a student over a Tylenol?

You can get over an addiction, but you can never get over a
conviction. It teaches kids to depend on the government to fix a
problem that isn't the government's business to begin with. Drug use
is a private family matter, a health and social issue and should be
treated as such.

Drugs are not living things, cannot fight back and therefore cannot
have a war waged against them. It's a war on American citizens, a war
on American children. By all accounts the drug war has been an abject
failure, as drugs are cheap, of high quality and plentiful to anyone
who wants them.

LORETTA NALL

Alexander City
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