LOCKSTEP BLIND POLITICIANS

QUESTION: What is it that Mayor Martin O'Malley, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy
Townsend, and Congressmen Robert Ehrlich and Elijah Cummings have in common?

ANSWER: They all prefer the pound of solution to the ounce of prevention
when it comes to the War on Drugs--which they all in lock-step support.

On Feb. 22, the above-mentioned suspects met with George Bush's Drug Czar
John P. Walters to press for more drug treatment money from Walters' boss.

No sane or caring person can deny that Baltimore, and the rest of the
country, need more money for drug treatment.... But treatment alone is the
most self-defeating way to approach America's drug and alcohol addiction
crisis.

The most expensive, also.

The ounce of prevention would be the cheapest and most effective approach.

What would that "ounce" amount to?

The first step would be to take the profits out of drugs, whereby the
addict could go to a clinic and purchase whatever drugs he/she would have
gotten anyway, at cost.

The very next day, dealers would have no one to sell to. They would have no
reason to shoot anyone. The addicts would have no need to steal anything
not cemented down in order to support their medical compulsion of
addiction. AIDS and VD would likewise diminish. And best of all, there
would be no financial incentive to recruit yet another generation to drugs
or alcohol.

The money saved on cops, courts, prisons, thievery, security systems,
broken families, broken everything.... would be more than enough to finance
an honest drug education program that wouldn't have to beg Big Daddy
Warbucks (Bush) for that which should be an unalienable right-- the right
to adequate medical treatment for addition, as well as for any other sickness.

A federal jobs and jobs training program for the unemployed and the
presently unemployable is also needed. "Cured" addicts need a decent life
to go back to. Only then can they become productive, wealth-creating
citizens....

A. Robert Kaufman

Mr. Kaufman writes from West Baltimore.