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From: ronc@fai.UUCP (Ronald O. Christian)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: The war on drugs
Message-ID: <378@fai.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Sep-86 14:42:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: fai.378
Posted: Fri Sep 19 14:42:43 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Sep-86 17:54:20 EDT
References: <5305@decwrl.DEC.COM> <1066@kontron.UUCP> <363@cci632.UUCP> <681@midas.UUCP>
Reply-To: ronc@fai.UUCP (Ronald O. Christian)
Organization: Fujitsu America, Inc.
Lines: 31

In article <681@midas.UUCP> jeffw@midas.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) writes:
>So you have a choice -
>X junkies with a load of crime and costly law enforcement, or X junkies,
>period. Isn't the answer obvious? (Surely no one is so naive as to
>believe that significantly fewer junkies is a realisitic probability?)
>You can only
>do so much to save people from their own stupidity, and as has been pointed
>out, removing the stigma of illegality *would* help those wanting to quit
>to come forward.

Actually, this is not as hard a line as it appears, if you spend
some fraction of the money presently spent on enforcing the drug
laws on rehabilitation.  (Similar to the rehabilitation centers
for alcohol abuse.)  I suspect that whatever else happens, legalizing
drugs will cause a decrease in drug related crime and a corrisponding
decrease in the money spent on fighting that crime.  I think we
can then throw funds at education and rehabilitation and still come
out ahead.

But that kind of plan doesn't win votes.  Drug users are in the
minority, after all.


				Ron
-- 
--
		Ronald O. Christian (Fujitsu America Inc., San Jose, Calif.)
		seismo!amdahl!fai!ronc  -or-   ihnp4!pesnta!fai!ronc

Oliver's law of assumed responsibility:
	"If you are seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it."