There is an extraordinary irony in America’s seemingly endless War on Drugs. What are arguably the most deadly mood- or mind-altering drugs known to humanity – tobacco and alcohol – are legal and socially acceptable.
I don’t believe in a devil (or a deity) but if such a being existed, he – or she – (or it?) could easily be thought the creator of tobacco. This is the only produce legal in America which, if taken precisely as directed, can kill. It is a truly fiendish product: addictive and implicated in an extraordinary number of disabilities and deaths from lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease. Yet this substance is sold at the corner market and convenience store and aggressively advertised.
The other major legal drug is alcohol. Unlike tobacco, it used safely when taken in moderation. However, it is a drug that many people are extremely apt to abuse and the consequences of abuse include liver and brain damage that can lead to death. “Alkis†and “winos†make up a large percentage of the homeless population because addition to alcohol leads to an extreme degree of impairment that prevents many alcoholics from being able to be self-supporting.
Even people who don’t habitually abuse this legal and socially acceptable substance may occasionally get drunk — and sometimes with devastating results. Perhaps no drug is more insidious to an automotive society like the modern United States than alcohol. The carnage caused by the inebriated behind the wheel is truly horrendous. Alcohol is a factor is so many traffic accidents because it both badly impairs coordination and creates a deluded recklessness.
Contrast the driver impaired by booze to the driver impaired by marijuana. The pot smoker’s vehicle is awkwardly steered but, in sharp contrast to the car driven by the drunk, it moves well under the speed limit. The tendency to go slowly and hold up traffic may lead other drivers to mutter irritably but it is much less likely to lead to genuine horror that dunk driving is.
Alcohol tends to lower inhibitions and, in many drinkers, aggravate tendencies toward aggression and anger. As a result, it is a factor in the commission of many of the most violent offenses such as assault, forcible rape, and murder. It can be a factor in incestuous abuse.
Of course, it is simply to late in the societal game to seriously consider attacking the evils resulting from tobacco and alcohol by outlawing them. The ill-fated experience of Prohibition showed that alcohol is just too deeply engrained in Western culture for laws banning it to be anything other than counterproductive.
However, I believe that it is also counterproductive and even grossly hypocritical to wage a so-called “War on Drugs†when the two worst drugs are legal.
We need to re-examine the entire concept of this peculiar “War.â€ÂÂ
Some observers have noted that human beings may possess a nature desire to experience altered states of consciousness. I believe this may be true and that it is pursued through a variety of means including meditation, hypnosis, certain athletic activities – and various drugs. When this desire is recklessly indulged, especially through the easiest and quickest means of drugs, it can cause many problems for the individual who indulges it, for the people around him or her, and for society as a whole.
Perhaps this “War†should be replaced with something far less combative such as a campaign to distinguish between drug use and drug abuse. We should cease persecuting those who may be using what are presently illegal drugs responsibly and in moderation and recognize that drug ABUSE is a problem that may be best handled as a primarily medical rather than criminal matter.
