"Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism"
Carl Gustav Jung

Aside from the fact that national prohibitions are proven by a long and dismal history not to work and aside from the fact that a huge amount of capital, both financial and human, is wasted on such efforts, the striving in the direction of drug control is actually harmful to its solution.

If drug enforcement agencies need help in locating suspects, all they require is to interview any of the scores of citizen's groups in the city of their choice. If drug dealing has been going on in their neighborhood, they know the corner and they can point out the individuals dealing. No problem . . . they've been telling their local police for the past ten years. The police know who these guys are, the neighbors know who these guys are, pretty soon the FBI will know who these guys are, but will it make a difference? Probably not. We don't have the collective will to put them away.

They have cellular phones and lookouts, along with the moxie and intimidation to make the most concerned citizen back off. Most of all, they have lots of money to buy off witnesses, police and judges. They have guns and they're as often using some of their own product, which makes them very, very dangerous.

We have only the courts and constitutional law, due process and overloaded court dockets, underpaid cops and underhanded judges. Not a fair balance, but the police may be able to keep us from anarchy for a while longer and I hope they do, because there is a vigilante feel to the neighborhoods. Good people, black, white and Hispanic are tired of watching their kids die in the drive-by warfare that holds us hostage. Too many tearful mothers on the evening news and too many neighbors angry and scared. Soon the citizen guns will come out, because the neighborhood knows who is to blame. The neighborhood knows that the system is failing and their kids are dying.

Perhaps what we really need in place of this growing vigilantism is to repeal the drug laws and take the profit out of illegality. Not all that new an idea and a tender issue. Then addicts will be able to register as addicts and can go to a drugstore, paying the price of a pack of cigarettes, instead of kicking in our windows or mugging our wives for the inflated price of an illegal hit. There won't be any more addicts after the decriminalization of drugs than there are now and good reason to believe there will be fewer. If you are addicted, you will carry a registration card allowing the purchase of enough drugs for personal use only . . . and at a cost that will let you work instead of steal and kill.

Our kids might be able to go back to playing in the streets and the neighborhoods might calm down. People might begin to talk with one another again, in front of the grocery and on the way to the cleaners. The elderly might be able to cash their social security checks and get home safely. We might begin to look after one another again.

With the obscene profits gone, kids won't look up to Cadillac driving dealers, they'll look down at a pointless poison. They won't have to witness a system that doesn't work and makes a mockery of their parent's cautions. With the profits gone, Central American countries can have their governments back and stop rightfully blaming the United States for consuming a product that has stolen their sovereignty.

With the profits gone, drug kingpins will no longer be able to flaunt international laws and buy their way out of prison terms.

With the profits gone, the billions spent each year by our federal government can be turned to the huge need for rehabilitation centers and anti-drug education.

With the profits gone, it won't be so cool to be hip and the incentive to lurk outside the schoolyard, urging drugs on a new batch of users will be removed.

Drug use, alcohol abuse, smoking and teen sex are all issues that parents want solved by federal law, mostly because they have failed to reach out to their own youngsters with any plausible argument against such abuses. It's an impossible task for government and the candidates who stand most forcefully shaking their fists and promising new wars against such abuses are lying through their teeth. They know it can't be done by government, but it makes a good press clip on the evening news. We're not only losing these wars, but we make ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of the world and the eyes of our sons and daughters in the effort.

Young people in this country are intelligent enough to be taken seriously. They are experimenters and risk-takers, each of which are the natural and encouraging hallmarks of youth. What they are not, is too stupid or unreliable to look out for their own long-term self interests. The rites of passage to adulthood will always be marked by an in-your-face attitude toward authority, just as they were in your and my youth. Curfews and legal impositions of authority that are the proper venues of family can never be successfully abdicated to government.

I think that we can win this battle in the shorter as well as the longer term by disarming the profit motive, providing care centers for the addicted and educating in our homes, schools and media.

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