Lesson 10: Violence

Columbia is in a state of civil war, and hundreds of civilians died in the American attempt to bring accused drug dealer Manuel Noriega to trial. In Washington, DC a reading teacher, trying to persuade her fourth graders to read at home, urges them to take a pillow and read in the bathtub -- the last place a stray bullet would be likely to reach. And some people still say that ending drug prohibition would be a dangerous social experiment. (David Boaz, The Consequences of Prohibition).

The notion of legalizing drugs is still socially unfathomable. Even with proven failure of the law to prevent drug abuse, people want to believe it will work. It is a type of denial. The L word is considered by many to be taboo, so we try to find other words to use ... a hook as the advertising business would call it. No matter what words we use, they are translated into legalization and thus ignored.

Somehow we have to break the mind-set that legal drugs would be easier to procure than illegal drugs. It is abundantly clear that illegal ones are everywhere.

And, we have to convince people that if the law were going to be a successful way to end drug abuse, we would have seen improvement by now! The time is long overdue for a new approach.

History Lesson #10: The glamorization of alcohol and tobacco was a form of drug pushing. All drugs must be understood for what they are -- scientifically -- not demonized, not glamorized.

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