Pubdate: Thu, 03 May 2007
Source: Morganton News Herald, The (NC)
Copyright: 2007, Media General Inc.
Contact: http://www.morganton.com/aboutus/letters.shtml
Website: http://www.morganton.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1623
Author: Calvin Acuff, MD

LEGALIZE DRUGS

Recently there have been large drug busts, mostly on interstates and
fortuitously stumbled onto with routine traffic stops. In spite of
these, there seems to be no shortage of drugs available on the
streets. Over the past 20 or 30 years, multiple billions of dollars
have been spent to interdict the entry into the United States of
illegal drugs. The availability of these drugs is probably easier and
they are more plentiful today than they've ever been.

If these plans to stop the drug problem worked they would have shown
some effectiveness by now.

We should have learned from the prohibition experiment. People wanted
alcohol and they got it illegally.

There is no good that comes from consumption of alcohol or other drugs
but those who desire to use them will get them one way or another. It
is my belief that the only way to get a handle on drugs is to legalize
them, tax them and control them in the same manner as alcohol. This
would eliminate the fortunes drug dealers make, the pushers would have
no incentive for making addicts and making big money supplying their
victims. Also, those who insist on using drugs would not crowd our
jails for illegal activities.

What we've been doing hasn't and will not work. Let's try something
new, something that has worked fairly well with the drug alcohol.

Calvin Acuff, MD

Morganton
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MAP posted-by: Derek