Drug Policy

Decriminalization would be a good place to start.

Most everyone I know who wants to end the drug war (which is what we're really talking about), doesn't want to encourage drug use. We've seen, tho, that moving to a treatment model works for many drugs - including alcohol. Portugal has shown more than a decade of success with their program.

Most people no longer label alcoholics as moral degenerates - tho they did in the past (when it was legal, pre-prohibition.) This was part of the attempt to stop men from drinking up the paycheck.

What has worked, tho, isn't labeling alcoholics as degenerate. What has worked is to give them the space to get treatment for an addiction. Most people who drink alcohol aren't addicted. But for those who are, the current approach is better.

I would also like to see LSD re-legalized for potential use as a drug to help treat alcoholics. Did you know that the founder of AA used LSD to help treat his addiction?

When Leary, et al, started talking about LSD as a recreational substance - that's when the trouble started.

Anyway, many of the expenses that stem from drug abuse are health issues - like sharing needles. If addicts had free access to clean needles, the cost of treatment for addiction would be much less because it's HUGELY expensive to treat HIV/AIDS.

Those associated costs are the reason to put such things in a legal, clinical setting.