Re: The World may be stranger than most imagine.

[Ray Evans Harrell]

Harry said: People desire drugs. Let them have them (see my post to Brian).     The problem here is the same as with the other axiom.   Your lack of specific definition.   The theater says who, what, when, where and why.    Who are the people, what age, class, gender, relationship to others such as pregnancy etc. ?    What is the meaning of their lives that drugs would effect?     Is it always OK for them to use drugs?    Is every place OK for the use of drugs?     Why do they choose to use the drugs in the first place?    And it would follow, do the drugs help the person attain the significance of their lives or does the accelerating desire slowly destroy their significance?   Was the open use of drugs good for Imperial China for example?    Was it good for the American public when it was in Coca-Cola?   Is the use of mind altering drugs good in today's society with children for hyper aggressivity?     Was it good for Freud?   Did it make him more creative or did it make him invent things that didn't exist and project them off onto the world in a master stroke of salemanship?     Decriminalizing drugs would certainly take the profit out of them, give no incentive to dealers to get people hooked. (A junior high distributor can make $200 a week dishing out stuff to his classmates.) Everything is not economics.  Profit, external to the value of the human self.   You sound like a therapist.   I'm a teacher.   However, the major problem with drugs is not being able to get them when you really need them. That is the problem with the destruction of people's lives?    Get serious.     I've been around it.   Have you really seen what drugs do to the human potential Harry?    The major problem is that drugs altar your natural processes and destroy your growth and potential. The class that were the major users of drugs before the epidemic hit were doctors. A doctor could use drugs yet operate successfully for decades. He never had to worry about dealing with his habit. He had easy access to drugs. They were also professionals who were trained already and adults.    Do you believe that children and adolescents are just little adults?   I did a piece on drugs some years ago. Many people can take drugs or leave them. Such people are called "chippers". The drug with the fewest chippers was nicotine. And nicotine does nothing to anyone right?      Think about that.   I did, you think about it.   Ray