Alan, I wonder quite a bit if the current "method" of distributing drugs doesn't make so much money for a relative few people that we will never see the day when we do away with this "system" in favor of something that makes sense.
We lost the war on drugs the day we engaged with it. We have spent a great deal of money in our attempt to "win" it. We won't ever win it.
The war on drugs, as CBS news has so accurately put it, is a war upon ourselves. It's the innocent citizens, pain patients, pain doctors and clinics that are taking it on the chin. And there appear to be so many agents who spend most of their time strutting their stuff for us to take seriously.
Why did it take the US three extra years to approve the use of bupenorphine for detoxification of opiate users after it had been used in western Europe for all that time? Do we really want to help our toxified public, or do we want them just to get what's coming to them, a form of suffering unimaginable unless you've actually experienced it?
I feel I'm babbling. There's so much to say about this subject I guess I don't know where to start. I've just seen so much waste of otherwise salvageable human life. It's very frustrating. And most of what we do about it is to hurl epithets at the problem and at opiate junkies, and to throw empty threats into the air.
So do you have suggestions? Let's hear 'em?
Frank
