ENDING THE DRUG WAR

There's one sure way to solve the prison crisis here and that's to
stop putting people behind bars for using mind- and mood-altering
drugs.

The "war on drugs" not only can't be won; the people fighting it
don't want to win because they are emotionally invested in fighting
what they know is a battle they can't win.

The spouse of an alcoholic or an addict is codependent, which simply
means they are addicted to the addict's addiction. Trying to control
their addicted spouse or children dominates their thoughts and is
their purpose, the core of their personal identity. Of course, the
more the codependent spouse tries to control his or her addict, the
addict resists by using more drugs and a deadly cycle results.

On a larger scale, that's what's going on with the DEA, the police
and the legal system. Religious conservatives paint us as
pleasure-bent and hedonistic, but because of the Puritan ethic, we
respond to having fun with shame that we medicate with drugs. We are
biologically hard- wired for pleasure: It's what runs our internal
reward system. There is an analog in the brain for virtually every
mood-altering chemical we use for a "buzz."

We need to accept reality and understand gut-level what the saying
"insanity is making the same mistake over and over expecting
different results" means. For people who simply experiment now and
then, the threat of prison has been proven as useful as Prohibition,
particularly when the bulk of the anti-drug propaganda continues to
flow from people who seem to miss the disconnect between their anti-
drug rhetoric and their own use of "legal" drugs like alcohol, a drug
that creates more violent behavior, damages more families and
individuals, than virtually all illegal drugs.

You want to save money on the jail? Use your power as a voter,
pressure your representatives, help create a rational, workable drug
policy, and let's pull out of the war on drugs.

Joseph V. Hamburger

Bellefonte