THE BAD OLD DAYS

How can we afford to help people get through college if huge amounts of our money pays for putting non violent drug offenders into federal prisons, sometimes for life?

Attorney General Sessions wants to bring back the openly racist mandatory sentencing for federal criminals. The result will be that minority defendants will be sentenced to a lifetime in jail for the same amount of drugs that gets a white dealer a much lighter sentence. (This is because sentencing is based on the form of the drug. Ounce by ounce, crack cocaine used by minorities gets much longer sentences than the type of cocaine sniffed by the upper class.)

Alcohol prohibition did not stop people from being alcoholics. Drug prohibition will not stop people being druggies. Substance abusers need to recognize that they need help, and help must be available to those who want to learn to live their lives without being impacted by substance abuse.

I believe much of the anti-drug propaganda is funded by drug dealers who want to keep their enormous tax free profits. For instance, the "opioid epidemic" is not just opioids. Almost always, the autopsy reveals that the overdose may have been caused by a combination of opioids and antidepressant medication, which seems to be a lethal combination.

It is not surprising that violence in our inner cities has increased. Just before prohibition ended, the FBI tried its very best to stop alcohol consumption. The result was an unacceptable increase in violence, which led to the end of prohibition.

Escalating the futile War on Some Drugs has caused sharp increases in violence every time the tactic is tried. Session rails against the term "recreational drug".

Those of us opposed to the futile drug wars use the term  "recreational drug" for a drug that is less harmful to the user and the person than alcohol.

TREATMENT FOR ADDICTION is the answer to misusing drugs.