Why Should We Care?

I am quite glad to be doing this blog on human intoxication, with emphasis in America. This explanation to why we should care shall be expanded over the next 11 weeks. The goal is to make people start talking about the drug war, not as taboo but as a factual part of life that needs to be fixed. 

As humans, there is no getting away from drugs. Over the past century there has been rising taboo around drugs which has led to an unnecessary downfall in our society. A society that has moved away from caring for its citizens and relying on medical advice to criminalizing and removing respectable citizens from society. Economically, the country as a whole has already spend 28 billion dollars this year on the drug war and it is rapidly rising. Police agencies have made 1.1 million non-violent drug arrests this year which seems like a small number but imagine the amount of time the agencies are wasting on other, violent, society harming crimes. Social issues, economical outrages, intoxication history, as well as false information-all being in play in the failing drug war. 

If you have never been involved with drugs, you are lucky. Wait- what are drugs and what drugs are bad? According to Nancy Reagan all drugs are bad. “Just Say No” to drugs she insists. Yet millions of people around the world use illegal drugs and are a working element of the society. One of the most heinous part of the drug war to me is the lack of reliable research on drug effects. Ecstasy could be used to help PTSD, depression, and anxiety; LSD can work in similar ways; and the worst culprit of them all is Marijuana. The lack of marijuana research is appalling enough to disbelieve anything negative (or positive) about the holistic drug. 

550,000 members of our prison population are spending billions of dollars of tax money while only committing non-violent marijuana crimes. This, along with the hundreds of thousands more are causing broken up families, but worse creates a class of criminals. How much does this really effect society and what good might come out of treating drug users medically, in a state of rehabilitation, rather than criminally. 

What has fired my interest in this drug war is not due to my use or believe in their use, but rather an interest in the role of intoxication to the human race and potentially touch on a part of man that might lead to further truth.  You might have heard of theories of evolution, but there is a theory with potentially tangible evidence of human evolution, through drugs. There has been no time in human existence where there wasn’t evidence of intoxicants.  Why is it now we apply restrictions to ourselves, potentially eliminating toxins from our bodies which may elevate, enrich, expand, or even save us. 

None of this is really something you couldn’t easily heard on recent CNN. There is quite a lot you could say about the failing drug war, but there has been little given in terms of how to fix it. Supporters of legalization usually stop just short of giving any concrete ways to fix system. This needs to be addressed just as much as arguments for delegalization/regulation. Countries like the US should take example from European as well as South American countries that have implemented drug policy reform with mostly positive results. 

Data from drugsense.org