I love to read other people’s blogs. It really is a wonderful medium. I have read several discussions lately about the pros and cons of legalizing drugs. There are many sides to this issue. Personal freedom. Possible revenue gains from taxing drug activity. Insuring safety through legal quality control of drugs.

On the other side is the enormous damage that illicit drug use causes in our society. The pain and cost to so many families is enormous. When someone in a family is addicted, it is like an atomic bomb going off inside that family. It is hard to question the intention of anyone who wants to keep substances that can wreck such havoc on lives out of the hands of people. It is hard to argue that anyone life in enhanced with heroin.

Long ago when I was young, I felt personal freedom was everything. I thought the government had no business legislating morality. If people wanted to screw up their lives, it was their right and they should suffer the consequences. As a much older and not so wiser person, I now feel a little differently. Drug addiction affects so many innocent people. The kids and spouse of addicted people suffer almost as much and the addict. Their “personal freedom” comes at a great price to the others in their life. To make it easier for people to fall into that trap makes no sense. It’s just not worth the risk. Anything we can do to make it more difficult for people to acquire drugs will save people grief. In my heart I believe legalizing drugs will lead to less people in prison. I’m afraid though it will lead to more people in rehab. There is no easy answer

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Drug Addiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.