CHOICE TO DO DRUGS IS RATIONAL

A colleague and I submitted a funding proposal to a foundation in order to
study the causes of illgal drug use. We maintained that realistic drug
policy cannot be written until the makers of that policy know why people
use drugs. The proposal was rejected, confirming our suspicion that no one
in the antidrug complex wants to learn that the choice to do drugs is for
most people a rational one, that users see themselves, rightly or wrongly,
as benefiting from doing so.

Thomas B. Roberts
Northern Illinois University
Dc KaIb, Ill.