Narcotics

Here in Colorado Springs we're fussing about medical marijuana. City council is contemplating and will almost certainly enact a ban on medical pot within 1000 feet of any school. I'm not against the ban, but lets not fool ourselves - the ban will not keep any kid away from marijuana.

I want to talk about harder drugs today, however. Ranging from hashish through cocaine and heroin and the synthetic substances, LSD and meth, and the new alcoholic caffeine drinks, they wreak havoc on our own population and do incalculable damage to the impoverished peoples of the earth.

Use of organic drugs undermines the health of users, drains their bank accounts, and causes their children to grow up in want. Whatever the motivation people have for narcotic abuse - poor self-esteem, desire for a thrill, rebellion against the hypocrisy in our society - the result is unhappiness and violence.

To prove the point, just look to our neighbor to the south. Gang violence, murder of innocents, enormous fortunes being accumulated by vicious persons while they terrorize honest farmers - all can be laid to the desire of Americans to use these awful substances.

As Americans, we demonstrate incredible arrogance going to poor people in other countries and asking them not to send us narcotics because our people can't control themselves. Not only are the deaths in Central America attributable to us, we also are buying opiates grown in Afghanistan where our soldiers are fighting and dying to defeat the Taliban, part of whose ability to keep battling us comes from sale of those same drugs.

To put it shortly, no one can be a patriotic American and use these drugs.

So, what we desperately need is a public education effort to call attention to the price we pay for experimentation or addiction. All that money spent on electing candidates could have been spent so much more beneficially trying to stop use of drugs.