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From: bill@sigma.UUCP (William Swan)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Drug Abuse: True Problem/Media Hype - You Pay the Price
Message-ID: <853@sigma.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Sep-86 17:38:05 EDT
Article-I.D.: sigma.853
Posted: Mon Sep 15 17:38:05 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 22-Sep-86 23:28:14 EDT
References: <720@scc.UUCP>
Reply-To: bill@sigma.UUCP (William Swan)
Lines: 37

In article <720@scc.UUCP> steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) writes:
>	The 9/15/86 *Time* had some revealing statistics.
>The one I found most interesting is  " . . . more people (570)
>died from appendicitis last year than from cocaine abuse (563)." [p. 64]
>	They also point out: "The death toll from cocaine is minute
>compared with the number of fatalies attributed in 1980 to alcohol (98,186)
>and tobacco (some 300,000 annually)." [p. 64]
>	The whole thing reminds the endless war in 1984.   Everyone
>was kept up to the minute on the war effort by the media, but there
>was no war at all.   The war was contrived by the rulers to impose
>greater social control.

Agreed!

Locally the King County (Seattle WA) Prosecutor Norm Maleng has jumped on 
the drug-abuse bandwagon and has called for easing a number of restrictions 
on police, such as the laws restricting the use of wiretapping, so as to make
the obtaining of evidence easier. What is frightening is that he is likely 
to get them! I understand that some recent legislation is already allowing
the use of illegally obtained evidence in court as well..

It's an easy exercise of civic virtue to speak out (and pass legislation)
against drug abuse. There's *nobody* gonna shout you down on that issue.
The danger is that it is all too easy to get carried away and pass truly
damaging legislation.

We've seen this already in the laws regarding child abuse. There is nobody
who can argue that child abuse is not harmful, and that it shouldn't be
stopped, but it has become too easy to pass laws that extend the reach of
"Childrens' Protective Services" to where they can, with complete impunity,
reach into law-abiding families and destroy them. (See the 9/14/86 Sunday
Seattle Times, page 1, for articles on CPS over-reaction.)

It is too easy to dispense with a (supposed unnecessary) freedom in order
to take care of an immediate concern, but freedoms lost are not easily
regained. The penalty for selling your birthright may be higher than
you imagine.