USE LOGIC, NOT DOGS

Much of the recent argument over legalizing drugs has been the dollar cost
of the drug war. There's more to it than that. There is also the cost of
swollen prisons, broken families, dead kids, and social disruption reaching
into the work place and public schools where all are treated with suspicion
over the few who may be users. This thing was a loser at its inception 40
years ago by not treating it as an attitudinal and mental health issue
rather than criminal.

Researchers are now concluding that - as with prohibition in the 1930s -
those inclined to use alcohol or drugs will find ways to do so, legal or
not. If we could stop drugs at the border, meth labs would proliferate. If
we could stop the meth labs, kids would sniff glue, paint or solvents.
They'll find a way. And threatening them with prison will not stop them.
Let's take the dogs out of the schools and trying using logic instead.

Many workers believe that if most kids can be safely guided through the
teens, maturation - and new, healthy allegiances - will take over in their
lives and fill the dangerous voids. Instead of doing that, we brand them as
criminals - and send them to prison.

Kids make mistakes. They're searching. And they don't do well at relating
consequences to actions. That's our job. And we should know by now that
just threatening to kick their behinds is not the best way to do it.

Herb Childs, Lubbock via e-mail