Pubdate: Sun, 10 Jun 2012
Source: Daily Tribune, The (Royal Oak, MI)
Copyright: 2012 The Daily Tribune
Contact:  http://www.dailytribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1579

FIGHT DRUG ABUSE WITH EDUCATION

While we compliment officials in Macomb and Oakland counties for 
moving quickly to curtail the dangerous use of K2, Spice and other 
so-called synthetic marijuana, we have to ask: why?

Why are our youngsters driven to use chemicals known to have 
dangerous health effects?

Why can't our country - as others have done - keep up with outlawing 
the latest fad drugs, whether manufactured for other uses or 
purposely intended to sidestep criminal charges?

Why are parents - after their children suffer health problems or even 
death - prone to blaming others rather than facing the fact that it 
was their child who knowingly used a dangerous drug?

And lastly, why hasn't America come to the realization that as a 
nation we have lost the so-called war on drugs?

It was June 1971 when President Richard Nixon officially declared a 
"war on drugs," identifying drug abuse as "public enemy No. 1."Since 
then, our government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying 
to stop drug abuse.

We arrested and jailed drug users under tougher penalties. We 
infiltrated foreign drug cartels and destroyed thousands of acres of 
drug producing crops.

We sent millions upon millions of dollars to foreign countries to 
assist - in many cases corrupt governments - in reducing their own 
drug problems.

Yet, 50 years later, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a 
report in 2011 declaring "The global war on drugs has failed, with 
devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world."

Unlike that commission, however, we do not support a general 
legalization of drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom