POLICY MAKERS IGNORE ALCOHOL IN DRUG COMBAT

As law enforcement lobbies members of Congress and state legislators
coast-to-coast for more funds to finance the war against illicit drugs,
Utah's Legislature considers liberalizing Utah's liquor laws.

As leaders obsess over how governments will help pay for the costs of
medical treatment, Utah's Legislature is considering liberalizing Utah's
liquor laws.

Someone should teach Utah's legislators that alcohol is the most abused drug.

Pretend for a minute that humankind had not discovered alcohol until Drexel
distilled it in 2000. After years of testing, would the Federal Drug
Administration allow it to be sold as a drink? At best, the FDA would place
it under a restrictive prescription schedule, complete with a list of
warnings against side effects and addiction potential.

Studies that tout alcohol's benefit on heart health illustrate that some
"scientific" testing is actually designed to justify our habits. If Drexel
had discovered alcohol and tried to market it as a heart medication, the
FDA would have denied the proposal because of its dangerous and addictive
side effects.

Ancient beers and wines had minor food value. In specific times and places,
they were safer to drink than the waters. Through the ages, humans
experimented with wines and spirits, not to improve their food value, but
to increase their alcohol jolt.

The snobbishness surrounding wine consumption is misleading, for vintners
are just as obsessive about high alcohol contents as are the distillers of
whiskey.

Alcohol, with tobacco and marijuana are the big-three hypocrisies in the
American war on drugs. Proponents of these substances would have us believe
they are really good for us because they are (in the popular cliche) "natural."

This logic is laughable. Mankind has so hybridized the plants involved in
wine and the various types of cigarettes that nothing is natural about any
of the products.

For example, mankind has so thoroughly hybridized marijuana in the past
four thousand years that the original plant probably does not exist
anywhere on earth. People tinkered with it -- especially since the late
1970s -- to increase the psychoactive buzz, not its dubious medical properties.

Neither the war on drugs nor the medical crisis can be taken seriously when
billions are squandered to treat conditions and illnesses caused by
culturally accepted drug abuse. When we are really serious about decreasing
medical costs and drug abuse, we will end recreational consumption of
alcohol, tobacco and marijuana.