OUR PART IN DRUG CULTURE IS STRONG ONE

Of course, we're all concerned about the meth labs in our neighborhoods,
about our kids getting hold of "adult beverages" (a euphemism like "adult
movies" or "adult book stores"), about the easy availability of pot, pain
killers, ecstasy, crack and all the rest.

But we are not winning our War on Drugs. We've committed our resources as a
nation and have failed to bring drug abuse under control. How can this be?

Illegal drugs are only the tip of the iceberg. Just beneath the surface
lies the whole destructive mass of the American drug culture:

a. The powerful example of parental drug dependence.

b. The TV brainwashing of children to inculcate the idea of better living
through chemistry (extra-strength, longer-lasting, ask your doctor).

c. The pushers and abusers of legal drugs who operate with little legal
supervision and almost no social sanction.

d. The government wanting to supply prescription drugs to everyone at
little or no cost.

We are a drug culture out of control. And we expect to fight and win a war
on drugs? This reminds me of our war on terrorism. We are ready to send our
kids overseas to stamp out the threat in Afghanistan or Iraq or Yemen, but
we haven't got the nerve to stamp it out at home for fear of
inconveniencing ourselves or getting the ACLU mad at us. So, too, we are
willing to stamp out someone else's drugs, as long as we can continue to
use and abuse our own.

Until we willing to take a long, hard look at our drug culture and our part
in it, I am very skeptical about the effectiveness of the coercive power of
the government, or about statistics showing a decline in illegal drug use
and very dubious that we will ever achieve real victory over drug abuse in
our society.

Zip Ribar, Long Beach