Pubdate: Wed, 12 Nov 2014
Source: Alaska Dispatch News (AK)
Copyright: 2014 Alaska Dispatch Publishing
Contact:  http://www.adn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/18
Note: Anchorage Daily News until July '14
Author: Elise Patkotak

SUBSTANCE ABUSE ITSELF SHOULD NOT BE A CRIMINAL MATTER

Here's the sentence that blew my mind last week, and it had nothing 
to do with Don Young being re-elected. An article about marijuana 
legalization stated that support for legalization was dropping and 
had reached a low of 51 percent.

Who ever thought I'd live long enough to find the bottom line of 
approval on pot legalization being above half?

How did we get from a time when pot was the devil's weed to a time 
when common sense prevailed?

Society finally seems ready to put old prejudices away and deal with 
pot in a realistic and functional manner.

As someone who has worked in human services for many years, I was 
unfortunately able to become intimately involved with dysfunctional 
and abusive families.

In every family in which addictive use of a substance was part of the 
problem, that substance was invariably alcohol and/or coke, not pot. 
If pot was used in those homes, it was to come down from the harsh 
high of other substances. Homes in which only pot was present were 
rarely, if ever, violent ... unless someone was trying to hog the nachos.

The worst that could be said is that those homes contained way more 
junk food than should be ingested by most humans and the choice of TV 
programs leaned toward cartoons, anime and sports.

I am aware that some people cannot and should not use pot. It is a 
substance that can be addictive and, like with alcohol, if you become 
addicted to it, a raft of problems can ensue.

Some people lose all enthusiasm and ambition and take to a reclined 
position on the piece of furniture nearest to their game console.

In fairly rare cases, some get violent.

But the same can be said not only for alcohol, but also for a sugar addiction.

The thing is, we need to learn how to cope with the medical issue of 
addiction in a way that does not criminalize the addict.

We in the United States already have the largest jailed population in 
the world.

Why would we deliberately add more when there is a simpler, more 
effective and certainly cheaper alternative?

Addiction treatment is not always successful. For many addicts it 
takes multiple attempts before they finally climb that mountain.

And once on top, they often must cling ferociously to their sobriety 
since falling off that peak is sadly easy to do. There are many 
addicts who simply don't want to be treated.

They don't see a problem with their addiction and don't understand 
why the world just won't leave them alone.

Now this may be the Alaskan in me talking, but honestly, if they are 
not hurting anyone else, don't they have the right to continue to use 
until their ultimately sad and early end? It may break the hearts of 
their family members who want them to live happy and healthy lives.

And it may cause society in general to look at them with pity. We 
should always offer them alternatives, but unless they make the 
choice to use those alternatives, there is little that can be done 
for an addict who wants to keep using.

Taking my tax dollars to pay for them to continue their addiction in 
jail where drugs are often as available as on the street is simply 
counterproductive. We spend a lot of money to achieve nothing.

It took society a long time to reach the point where alcohol could 
neither be used as an excuse or a mitigating circumstance for a 
crime. If you get behind the wheel of your car drunk and hurt 
someone, you made a choice, albeit a stupid one based on an addled 
brain. Just as alcohol is no longer an excuse for hitting someone, 
neither should pot or any other drug be offered as a mitigating 
circumstance in a crime.

Do the crime, do the time.

But simply being an addict is not a crime.

And if we're going to jail people for not taking care of their 
medical conditions, then there are a lot of smokers with emphysema 
who should be in jail -- to say nothing of the diabetics out there 
who continue to consume sugars and carbs with no care for the medical 
consequences.

Pot is not the problem.

Addiction is the problem.

And that's a medical, not criminal, issue.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom