Re: Marijuna
Personal Anecdote: My parents grew up in southern Michigan during a period of time in which drugs were easily acquired and a small-time weed dealer could make a nice chunk of money with little effort. They tried pretty much everything short of heroin during their teen years. Both of them quit using everything except MJ when they moved to Texas in the early 80s, and they stopped even that when my mother realized she was pregnant with me.
After I was born, both of them stayed off all drugs (alcohol excluded) for several years. My father had a brief bout with pain killer addiction in the early 90s due to a series of very painful accidents and very poor treatment (no insurance, workers comp sucked then). My father handled his addiction and got back on the right path, but then there was an economic downturn in the construction industry in Texas and money became tight. Due to the stress, my mother began using multiple drugs.
I should mention before I go further: my mother has very obvious, though undiagnosed, mental issues. She is at least bi-polar but more likely schizophrenic. She has suffered the effects of her mental problems since she was a child and has never received any formal treatment. That said...
My mother's addiction spiraled. She lied, hid it, and manipulated people so masterfully that when my dad left because he could no longer handle her she still managed to win custody during the divorce. For the next four years I was tossed around emotionally and mentally as she went back and forth between various mental illness issues and the effects of the drugs she chose to use. She was offered rehab twice, she's been convicted of prostitution, possession, possession with intent, and domestic violence twice each. One more conviction for either crime and she'll receive Michigan's max sentence for that crime (three-strike law). She almost died 2 years ago due to complications from a necrotic bowel and the emergency surgery her body was too weak to handle.
Today, she's almost 50 but looks like she's in her late 70s. She's got dentures because all of her natural teeth have rotted and fallen out. Her hair is sparse and stringy and she's shrunk from 5'2" to 4'9". She has a heart problem, she lost 12 feet of intestine, and lord only knows what other health problems. She's on SSDI, receives food stamps, and uses money she makes from hooking herself to continue supplying herself with drugs. No approach from our family has worked to encourage her to change, seek help, or acquire counselling. Involuntary committment is next to impossible in this situation because I, as the next of kin, live in another state and have almost no contact with her.
All of that said: My mother would have accessed these drugs whether they were legal or not. If they were legal she might not have spiraled so quickly because logical, common sense regulations would have inhibited her ability to buy legally and the costs would have been prohibitive. She would still have been an addict, and without the drugs she probably would have behaved much worse due to the mental issues she suffers from.
I've seen her and her addict friends sink to the very bottom of a dark, dangerous pit. I lived with heroin addicts, crack addicts, and people who whored themselves out for another fix. I can tell you exactly what cooking heroin smells like. And even with all of that, I say drugs should be legalized (MJ especially).
Why? Because in areas where drug use has been decriminalized crimes, deaths, and illlness related to drug use has declined significantly. So did the occurrence of addiction. Money previously invested in seeking out and prosecuting users was reapplied to identifying trends amongst users and working to interrupt them. Providing preimpetive mental health counselling, interjecting prior to the addiction process, creating detox and addiction counselling programs that actually work...and it's been successful. That being the case, in that society it's entirely possible I might still have a mom, and not just some shell of a woman who happened to carry me in her womb for 9 months before subsequently destroying me mentally for 10 years of my life. Our current system saves nobody, and punishes too many. I have no desire to see that system continue. We're losing our loved ones everyday because of archaic, backwards, corrupted policies built on ignorance, fear, and control.