"Jay Honeck" wrote in message oups.com...
I propose we stop our knee-jerk policy and try something different.
De-criminalize drugs and attack the real problem: addiction. Treatment does
work, if it'a available to those who want it, and we could treat every addict
in the country for a tenth of what we're spending on the WoD.

Unfortunately, treatment of drug and alcohol addiction is an abyssmal
failure, far surpassing the failure to stop the flow of drugs.


Citations?


Not because of lack of money (although there *is* that), but because
it just doesn't work -- period. Take a look at the stats, and it's
absolutely appalling how few people succeed.



The amount of money spent on prevention and treatment is fractions of what has been spent on this so-called war. If we
spent as much money on treatment and prevention of addiction as we have spent in the vain attempt to prevent this stuff
from getting in to the country we would not have the problems you see. I'll bet we could give each 'additcted' person
$30,000 a year just to stay in a home and we would be money ahead...


People who are addicted to drugs and alcohol are usually damaged in
other ways. I've never yet met a homeless person who wasn't either
mentally ill, addicted to drugs and/or alchol, or all three. My
sister has been in an out of treatment programs for 30 years -- to no
avail. And now, after years of abuse, she is so mentally screwed up
that she couldn't hold a job even if she were cold stone sober.

Multiply her times 10 million, and you see the magnitude of the
problem.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"



This is kind of like my naive dream that some day there VFW will disappear. There will no longer be any veterans of
foreign wars because it has been so long since there was a war that the last veteran passed away and none were left...