THIS MOB UNLIKELY TO SLAY E. KY.'S DRUG MONSTER

All his life, Steve Pence has wanted to be lieutenant governor, and
now is doing what they do, which is to think up endless and ever-new
parts of life for government to get into.

To this end, he has been in Eastern Kentucky, where he assembles the
people who have caused most of our problems, and together they figure
out who else to blame them on.

Our biggest problem here is how to get the money to buy Lortab, Xanax,
Vicodin and, for self-destructors of means, Oxycontin.

Pill abuse is primarily a problem with the young, since abusers
generally do not get old.

But the rise of drug abuse in the mountains came during the precise
time that government got involved in trying to help. Stiffer
sentences, more cops, bad search warrants and judicial indifference to
the rights of the people did not soften the drug problem, but made it
worse.

Those D.A.R.E. programs taught lies to kids about the harm of some
substances, and so when the kids tried that stuff and knew they had
been lied to, they didn't believe the truth about narcotics.

The D.A.R.E people provided a rebel's cookbook of names of drugs,
effects of drugs and what they look like. So those professional drug
fighters will come to those meetings and meet with your senator or
representative, who lacks the courage to make reasonable
classifications in his laws and who cannot deny those sad and angry
people -- no matter whatever ill conceived law they are asking for --
who have lost family to wrecks.

Victims make worse shapers of public policy than even criminals, and
nobody can withstand their pain. I predict that in time and more
legislative sessions, fetal homicide will be interpreted to make
masturbation a Class D felony.

Educators will be at the drug meetings, as though such stuff as drug
education were so unimportant we could trust it to schools, which are
better suited to teaching how to bust a zone press.

Now, don't expect the educators if the district tournament is going
on. The blizzard of 1888 cannot shut down a mountain school during the
tournaments.

Religious leaders will be at the drug meetings, and they will have to
answer to Pence for having taught the young that euphoria is available
and should last most of the time and that this life is not as
important as the next one.

The legal system will be represented with one caveat: lowlifes who
represent these pushers and druggies can speak, but nobody is to pay
them any attention.

Defense of evil is too much a New Testament process. The prosecution
of crime and the looking down of the public nose, or judging, is more
of an Old Testament process, and we all secretly prefer the Old Testament.

The legal system, at the direction of the legislature, has sent ever
more of the young to graduate schools for crime.

We used to have LaGrange and Eddyville, and now the storage of
presumed human waste has become our new economy, demanding more and
more of these meetings to achieve our goal of no empty cells.

Those drug meetings will feature the usual assortment of counselors,
rehabbers and those who advertise that they can cure human nature if
you have a medical card.

But as long as we subsidize disability and pill-taking and fail to
teach our young how to grow food and live without money, we will have
a drug problem. It's too serious a problem for the government to get
involved in.