If We Stopped the Failed War on Drugs and Legalize It

by Dr. Kevin McNamee March 28, 2020

While leaving my office this afternoon, I took the back stairs that exit to a landing with a low wall. As I opened the door to leave the stairwell, I felt a resistance against the door and heard a woman shouting wait. Looking around the door, I saw a cell phone, back pack, syringe and a woman with a tourniquet wrapped around her arm.

She looked to be in her mid 40’s but upon further inspection I realized she was a very weathered 20 something year old who’s once attractive features were ravaged by drug use, homelessness and surviving on the street.

I asked her to go elsewhere to do this. She apologized and quickly gathered her belongings. I asked where she gets her food? She said food stamps. I asked what was her drug of choice? She lowered her head and said does it matter? She walked to the sidewalk and disappeared around the building.

Heroin and crystal meth are highly addictive drugs that capture the hearts and minds of Americans rendering a person incapable of fulfilling their purpose in life. The addicts thoughts move away from service of others and towards the next feel good drug hit. No longer is their family and loved ones as important as the drug.

Unable to maintain a job but still have the need for the drug, forces the addict to search other means of income. Prostitution, burglary and robbery are among the many crimes drug addicts do to get their fix. Our community crimes revolve around drug addiction in one manner or another. Law enforcement place eighty-percent of the homeless as drug addicted or mentally ill.

When seventy-percent of the illegal drugs entering this country come through our shared southern border with Mexico, why then do politicians oppose securing it?

To those who feel the war on drugs has not worked to stop the flow of drugs into America, I wonder, absent this effort, how readily available drugs would be in our community to reap havoc.

To those who feel drugs should be legalized so government can regulate it and receive the tax revenue, I ask why then in Amsterdam, who has done just that, have seen the drug tax revenue pay for drug rehabilitation facilities for their drug addicted and homeless who are forever dependent on the government for sustenance.

An answer to why our elected politicians do not unleash the power of American resources to stop this keeps pointing to drug cartel money finding its way into the politician’s pockets, either directly or indirectly. Don’t think it has not happened. American politicians are just as susceptible to the lure of the same traps as politicians of Mexico, Central and South American.