Pubdate: Thu, 14 Apr 2016 Source: Ukiah Daily Journal, The (CA) Copyright: 2016 The Ukiah Daily Journal Contact: http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/feedback Website: http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/581 Author: Catherine A. Lair DRUGS NO ANSWER To the Editor: All anyone has to do is look around any town, any city, anywhere. If you look closely, you will see the man that hasn't showered, talking to himself, walking blindly. The woman with a baby stroller with no baby, but dealing with a customer in no secrecy, on a beautiful spring day. A mom with a baby in stroller, walking down the middle yellow line of a street, not even a clue that it's dangerous, or the car running a red light sometimes hitting another person, innocent of wrong. And the crime percentages everywhere, home invasions, burglaries, domestic abuse, murder, injury accidents while high or the corruption of people in power to promote drugs either legal by doctor or illegal. If anyone really believes drugs when legal will make things better somehow, then they are in denial of their surroundings, their town, their love of mankind. The money involved in drugs, plus the money involved in rehab from drugs, is mind blowing. What happens if a drug addict relapses three, four, five times. At what point will someone else besides them get hurt. Whitney Houston and her daughter? Love of humans is taught. Love of self to not self destruct, is usually also taught, through a religion and belief in a moral sense of right and wrong. In the belief life and our bodies are a gift. The more we promote drug use, we are actually promoting body abuse and self-destruction. Life is tough, but life addicted to drugs everyday is many, many times harder. Getting a job is hard, getting a job on drugs almost impossible or hard to keep. The opposite of war is peace, how is there more peace by enabling more people to do drugs? Most drug addicts don't stop on their own. They are forced to, by arrest or health or death or no more family money to keep addiction going. Ask the little kids, ask the sober parent, ask the worrying sister or brother, ask the grandparent raising grandchild alone, drugs cause war, not peace. We need to start early with kids and children, we need to stop the lie that drugs are cool and normal and controllable in dosage. Because everyone is cool, until the one time they are not. - - Catherine A. Lair, Ukiah - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom