Reality Checks

For many years in the U.S., we've fought a war on drugs. The war has been fought on the streets with guns, wielded by police forces trying to do their duty. The war has been waged in the courts at immense expense by tax payers. The war is struggled with daily in the overcrowded prisons, where people languish for years, often in the cell next to a child rapist whose release will be more imminent than the drug user's, in far too many cases.

In spite of all of these frantic actions and day-in-day-out duties, drug usage continues to rise in the U.S.--and this constant demand causes wars in other countries, where drugs are illegaly manufactured, transported and sold. Countries like Mexico, where too many people have died in the crossfire.

Some stastics from the U.S. Government's Institute on Drug Abuse, and the Bureau of Mortality Statistics state that guns in the states kill just under 31,000 citizens, and that illegal drugs cause an annual 15,000 deaths.

Tobacco causes a whopping 400,000 deaths and that all-time favorite drug of choice, alcohol, causes 100,000 people to die. Enormous numbers of people die every year from just smoking and drinking alcohol, and yet the advertising account executives from each of those industries are not among those hurting in the present economy.

Legal drugs, those we can get across the counter or with a doctor's expensive prescription, destroy 20,000 lives. Mercy, those legal drugs are even more dangerous than the illegal ones, the drugs we fight so hard to overcome and kill and maim and wipe off the face of the earth! The Oxycontin and Percoset, et al, cause 5,000 MORE deaths than do the illegal drugs.

What, I ask you, is wrong with this picture? Are people afraid that by voting to legalize all drugs, they will be counted as sinners themselves? By associating themselves with a country which legalizes all drugs, they might be tainted as running with the wrong crowd? Will we all go to hell if we keep the guns which cause 31,000 deaths per year, but we deny and criminalize the illegal drugs which cause less than half that number?

According to this research, more people die from simple caffeine than they do from marijuana. More die from aspirin than from grass! Really, do we understand what the story is behind this "war?"

Reality can be checked and categorized and cleaned up and printed in black and white beside ads for diet pills and vodka, but reality cannot be relied upon to be accepted. The fact is, Prohibition caused more crime and more deaths than the alcohol did....facts on record support this and other horrifying information on the subject.

The fact is, fighting drugs is big business. Selling arms to drug cartels, even bigger business. And it's about the business, folks, and we all know that deep-down; it's never been about the dangers or numbers of deaths or morality. Now, the next time a vote comes up to legalize illegal drugs, think about this: we spend more money as a nation fighting drugs like marijuana, which causes NO deaths per year, than we do in taking care of people who DO have real drug problems.

Reality? I don't think we know what it means any more.

ANNUAL AMERICAN DEATHS CAUSED BY DRUGS
TOBACCO ...........................400, 000
ALCOHOL ...........................100, 000
ALL LEGAL DRUGS ....................20, 000
ALL ILLEGAL DRUGS...................15, 000
CAFFEINE ............................2, 000
ASPIRIN ................................500
MARIJUANA ............................... 0
Source: United States government.
National Institute on Drug Abuse,
Bureau of Mortality Statistics

ANNUAL AMERICAN DEATHS CAUSED BY GUNS: FROM CDC: 30,896 (FROM 2006) ANNUALLY