Pubdate: Sun, 08 May 2011 Source: Paradise Post (CA) Copyright: 2011 Paradise Post Contact: http://www.paradisepost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3112 Author: Garry Cooper WE MUST LOOK TO OTHER SOLUTIONS Editor: We absolutely must refuse to listen to the specious arguments from the law enforcement/prison industry on how they are the answer to the drug problem in our country. After all, if they were the solution, don't you think that with the trillions they have spent since the 1960s that we would see some results other than a huge prison bureaucracy robbing our schools of education and after-school sports monies, further exacerbating the problem? The proof is in the pudding. The answer is simple, but the solution is nearly impossible when the politicians must prostitute themselves to the prison industry in order to get elected and mindless fools fall for their propaganda. We can solve most of the issues related to drug abuse with one simple policy change. All drugs should be distributed legally to the users so that the black market for them is wiped out overnight. The gangs in our cities that recruit our young, as well as the Mexican mafias that have killed nearly as many souls on our border in the last five years as we lost in the entire Viet Nam war would lose 100 percent of their funding and collapse. The users would get a little love in the form of information and counseling when they dropped in and treatment when they wanted it, all funded by the massive savings from ceasing to lock up innocent people. Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Garry Cooper Durham - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake