DRUGS ruin people's lives and it's just a fact

[Senior]

Just a little preface here; I wrote this in response to what people were saying about drugs on a right wing/cristian web site and I was also posing as an American because they hate Canadians as well. I know it sounds odd that I would read a message board like that but I find it really helps my critical thinking skills to do so. In reference to my father dieing of a heroin over dose that's not quite true but is factual. He did die but was revived by paramedics. I think of him as being dead though becuase I haven't seen him in over 5 years. Anyway here goes,

[quote author=Justice for All link=board=general;num=1066164036;start= 105#106 date=10/18/03 at 11:09:59]
1. The drugs are more dangerous.

2. The war on drugs is NOT unconstitutional.[/quote]

Now you seem be to very sure of your views on this subject and well most others in general, so considering that I don't know you I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The thing that I see here though is that I think you are actually in agreement with the people who want to legalize drugs. We all know that drugs are dangerous but I think that in all honesty that's just a distraction from the real issues.

I'm going to share some personal experiences that I've had with this issue. My father died of a heroin over dose when I was 15 and my sister is now a recovered methamphetamine addict. She lost 3 years of her life to that drug and caused my mother and me unimaginable suffering. I won't even start to describe all the horrible things that she went through. Now the reason that I bring this up is because when you have been personally affected by this war on drugs you tend to see things a little differently. On a personal basis I oppose the war on drugs because it didn't stop my family members from using drugs and it didn't help them get off them either. In my dad’s case it was just too late, he got into drugs in the 70's when no one knew just how bad cocaine (that was by the way the first drug he ever used) was. In my sisters case though it sure didn't stop her from using them and it made her into a criminal. She is one of the brightest and most honest people I know, there is no way she could ever be construed as a criminal minus the fact that she used to use drugs. She was a straight A student through high school and into university, she was editor of the year book, graduated in the top 1% of her school and was by all accounts the last person any one would have expected to do something like she did. Anyway I digress, what I am talking about here are real solutions that worked in real life. When things got so bad for her that she couldn't bare it anymore and me and my Mom had cut her off from any support other than that we still loved her unconditionally she eventually went from a functioning addict to a non functioning addict. This meant that she lost her job, dropped out of university with 1 semester left and was couch surfing to stay off the streets. She was in a real bad place mentally and was slipping into what I can only imagine would have been the darkest depression ever possible. She was contemplating suicide and came to my Mom because she just had no where else to turn. She pleaded with my Mom that we take her in and even threatened that she would turn to being a prostitute if we didn't. My Mom gave only one condition and that was that she let us help her get off the drugs. While this had all been happening my Mom had been doing extensive research into drug addiction and treatment and now that my sister was ready to be helped we put that to work. It cost us $1000's of dollars when we could scarcely afford rent (how we got the money is an entire story in it's self but it was all done honestly) and it was a long process but in the end she did manage to clean herself up and now 4 years after that she is quite possibly a healthier, better person for having gone through this. When you people talk about drug addicts I don't think you quite realize just how human they are. They have brothers and sisters just like you do and many people who care about them and want to help. Now a very sad aspect of this is that while we were making every possible effort to scrounge up the required money to heal my sister’s illness (and it is an illness, drug addiction that is) we were also paying a huge amount of tax money into fighting the war on drugs.

People make their own decisions as we all know and sometimes no matter what any of us do they are very bad ones. With this situation I believe that this is an undisputable reality. So barring a totalitarian society as we all seem to agree that we want to live in a free country (or do we, I sometimes wonder) I will assert that we have to let people make the mistakes they are going to. In fact it's not even a case of "letting" them, it's just a fact that they will. We all know of someone that has lead an unhealthy life style and died of a heart attack, or of someone who might have even got a speeding ticket. The decisions that they made were bad ones and in some cases they lead to people dieing. Now we do make efforts too stop people from speeding and leading unhealthy life styles but it's much less likely that we would incarcerate them for making these mistakes. In fact in the case of heart disease we have national fundraising campaigns to find a cure. My point here is that doing drugs is a bad decision but not one that makes you any less human than another person and in it's self not one that should make you a criminal. If a person is a thief they are beyond argument a criminal whether or not they use drugs, so let’s leave it at that. The examples are endless but it's all the same premise. What people do to others can be criminal but not what they do to themselves.

Now in the case of my sister I don't know the exact amount of money we spent to help her get her life back on track but I guarantee that it was much less than the cost of putting her in jail for even one year and she was I'm sure at some point involved with a drug transaction that could have landed her in jail for a year or maybe more. Would a year in jail have made her a better person or any one a better person? I highly doubt it. All the same if she had been caught our society would have been out at least $20,000 and a year latter she would have been back on the streets probably up to the same shit. Now someone else was saying how they would kill a drug addict if they caught that person breaking into their house. My sister would have been very unlikely to do that under any circumstance but just for sake of argument let’s say she did. To that person I will tell you in all honesty that if for any reason under the sun you killed my sister I would find you and do much worse to you and those you love. Would this be the right thing to do, well obviously not, it would do nothing to bring back the person I love but we all have our breaking point. So at that point we would have so many more problems than if we had just legally made her drugs available to her and let her addiction run its course. If we did let her just have her drugs in all eventuality she still would have hit rock bottom. Whether or not drugs are illegal they will always have the same effects on people.

So let’s say that drugs were legal, does that mean that I want to see across the board programs to deal with the problems created? The answer is a very definite no. What I do want to see is communities having the right to determine what their solution will be. When you give control of these matters to a smaller amount of people you can have a much truer democratic solution to them. That solution could be completely different in some small town in Utah than it is in an inner city area of LA. If for instance a community wants to keep drugs illegal and throw people in jail for doing them or selling them than let that community pay the costs of locking those people up.

In my community I would push to have free drugs accessible to addicts and also allow the legal sale of them through government controlled stores to anyone dumb enough to use them. Right away I wouldn't have that dangerous group of thug, gang bangers on the corner trying to sell me crack. I wouldn't have to walk past heroin junkies begging for money so they can get some food (obviously they want heroin but just won't say that). I wouldn't have my car or home broken into so that some junkie can sell my $1000 speakers to get $10 for their next hit. Also there wouldn't be that drug deal gone bad drive by shootings over and over. Now this isn't to say that this is a perfect solution to these problems but it's a lot better of one than the current ways we deal with these problems.

So at this point you will still have drug addiction and people that can't support themselves and I say leave it up to the community at large how that should be dealt with. I know that I would like to help solve that problem and the fact is that thousands and probably even hundreds of thousands of people have similar stories to mine. People die in this war every day and families are stricken with grief.

Now if you (anyone reading this) feel differently about this than I do than fine, I respect that. But please be a part of freedom and democracy by having your opinion because you think its right. Not because of the way things are. Don't be against legalizing drugs because they are against the law. Laws are made in our society to protect each other and I don't believe that these laws are the best way to protect us.

[Rhianna]

Going through a meth addiction or any drug addiction with someone you love is beond hard. It is with out a doubt the most painful thing I have ever had to go through. The words to decribe what it is like are imposable to come up with. It gives you a very very different view on drugs and drug use. I agree that the way the government is dealing w/ this problem is not helping. It's just getting worse.