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From: ray@rochester.ARPA (Ray Frank)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,net.med
Subject: Re: Drug Abuse - True Problem or Media Hype?
Message-ID: <20894@rochester.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 18-Sep-86 13:13:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: rocheste.20894
Posted: Thu Sep 18 13:13:39 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Sep-86 00:13:27 EDT
References: <720@scc.UUCP> <20756@rochester.ARPA> <463@epimass.UUCP> <445@madvax.UUCP>
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept., Rochester, NY
Lines: 22
Xref: linus talk.politics.misc:230 net.med:4631

In article <445@madvax.UUCP>, susan@madvax.UUCP (Susan Finkelman) writes:
> I too was "addicted" to tobacco when I was too young to know any better.  I
> decided to stop smoking and, therefore, I no longer smoke.  Quitting wasn't
> fun.  However I didn't need military intervention, nor government mandate
> nor police harrassment to make me quit.  Do you really expect to get a
> lot of respect from kids who see that their elders drugs of choice are
> legal?  Need I bring up the overwhelming success of Prohibition?
> 
  Some things are easier to decide to stop doing than others.  If you'd become
addicted to crack or speed or whatever when you were young, number 1, you may
not have been able to kick the habit, and number too, if you did, your
brain might have been irreversibly damaged by the time you stopped.
  Do you really expect to get a lot of respect from kids when they see their
elders breaking the law, such as doing harmful and illegal drugs?  
  Prohibition?  Too bad it didn't work.  Twenty five thousand people a year
every year would be alive to enjoy prohibition rather than a grave.  Another
500,000 people per year would not be severly injured, trying to enjoy life 
from a hospital room or wheel chair.  These two drugs, alcohol and tobacco, have
wiped out more people then all the wars in our history, so why not introduce
more drugs into our society?

ray