Guillermo Paxton's Blog - Posts Tagged "family-values"
Drug war failure, part two- my personal experience with drugs
Millions of dollars are spent every year on the drug war-weapons, law enforcement, ammunition, and millions more on incarceration of those linked to drugs, and many who have committed crimes in order to procure drugs. Yet everyone knows this. I am about to share a personal story with you. I am not the kind of person that likes to share personal information about myself or family. I like my privacy. But people need to understand why the drug war failure is such an important issue that needs to be dealt with, and my experience is a prime example of that.
I have child that is lost to me, and I find myself awaiting a call any day from someone that they have overdosed. My child is only eighteen but we have been battling the addictions since age thirteen. And it has progressed from bad to worse to injecting the most horrific things into their veins. I placed my child in rehab a few times when they agreed, but now what is needed is intervention that forces my child into a rehab that they won’t be let out of. Anyone who knows about rehab also knows that the law is not set up that way and it has to be voluntary.
And I think about the millions of dollars spent on armament, judicial processes, and manpower for the drug war. Yet there are no fewer addicts this year than the year before, or the year before that, etc. The jails are full of people that have committed crimes that the root cause, directly or indirectly, was drug abuse. They get out and commit more of the same crimes and end up back in later. A small percentage is actually reformed. If we were to use the number of people actually reformed and never returning to jail as the marker for success or failure for a business model, this business would be bankrupt.
The causes of drug addiction are many. People who have strong family units and good childhoods are as prone to addiction as those who do not, although they are less likely to get into the really heavy drugs. I believe that good family values, parents who work together to take care of their children and devote time to them, divorced or not, are invaluable to raising strong and independent children. A strong and independent person is much more likely to make better decisions at younger ages than those that are not, obviously. It seems that both the government and businesses benefit more from broken families- one household turns into two, more taxes, more spending, etc. That is a short run benefit, as the world economy is now seeing. With an emphasis on material goods (mostly technology), the world has lost sight of the importance of family, and the consequences are soulless, heartless people, those addicted to consumption (of all types)and those addicted to money, destroying the environment and humankind’s future.
Yet we continue with the mindless frontal attack and policy enforcement that has yielded only bloodshed and a crime wave never seen before in Mexico. What we should do is spend millions on drug addiction rehabilitation and inject more money into combating the factors that lead to addiction. Pharmaceutical companies could make millions on pills that people could take to inhibit the effects of drugs or stopping the addiction in the brain. I’m no scientist, but with all of the advances in mood enhancing drugs and inhibitors, I know that it must be possible. Why is it that they aren’t interested in that?
Why would the government want to stop addiction? Why would it want a stronger family unit, or a people that are able to rise above and meet their potential? If that happened, we wouldn’t see the government’s wasteful spending of its taxpayers’ incomes, or people not receiving a decent education, or homeless and starving people. Or at least there would be very little of that. Instead the people would be in control and would not stand for corruption and ineptitude. No longer would politicians have salaries far beyond the average citizen’s; and they would be held accountable for their actions. And there would be no need for a huge tax or welfare system.
While we spend millions of dollars combating the drug dealers, and faulting them with the addictions of the people, millions of addicts go untreated and ignored. Families like mine struggle to find help with our addict and yet are forced to pay for a drug war that has not only failed miserably but has also changed the face of an entire country for the worse. While those who make weapons and ammunition become more powerful and wealthy, we become poorer and our voices go unheard.
And my child remains lost to me. I miss you.
I have child that is lost to me, and I find myself awaiting a call any day from someone that they have overdosed. My child is only eighteen but we have been battling the addictions since age thirteen. And it has progressed from bad to worse to injecting the most horrific things into their veins. I placed my child in rehab a few times when they agreed, but now what is needed is intervention that forces my child into a rehab that they won’t be let out of. Anyone who knows about rehab also knows that the law is not set up that way and it has to be voluntary.
And I think about the millions of dollars spent on armament, judicial processes, and manpower for the drug war. Yet there are no fewer addicts this year than the year before, or the year before that, etc. The jails are full of people that have committed crimes that the root cause, directly or indirectly, was drug abuse. They get out and commit more of the same crimes and end up back in later. A small percentage is actually reformed. If we were to use the number of people actually reformed and never returning to jail as the marker for success or failure for a business model, this business would be bankrupt.
The causes of drug addiction are many. People who have strong family units and good childhoods are as prone to addiction as those who do not, although they are less likely to get into the really heavy drugs. I believe that good family values, parents who work together to take care of their children and devote time to them, divorced or not, are invaluable to raising strong and independent children. A strong and independent person is much more likely to make better decisions at younger ages than those that are not, obviously. It seems that both the government and businesses benefit more from broken families- one household turns into two, more taxes, more spending, etc. That is a short run benefit, as the world economy is now seeing. With an emphasis on material goods (mostly technology), the world has lost sight of the importance of family, and the consequences are soulless, heartless people, those addicted to consumption (of all types)and those addicted to money, destroying the environment and humankind’s future.
Yet we continue with the mindless frontal attack and policy enforcement that has yielded only bloodshed and a crime wave never seen before in Mexico. What we should do is spend millions on drug addiction rehabilitation and inject more money into combating the factors that lead to addiction. Pharmaceutical companies could make millions on pills that people could take to inhibit the effects of drugs or stopping the addiction in the brain. I’m no scientist, but with all of the advances in mood enhancing drugs and inhibitors, I know that it must be possible. Why is it that they aren’t interested in that?
Why would the government want to stop addiction? Why would it want a stronger family unit, or a people that are able to rise above and meet their potential? If that happened, we wouldn’t see the government’s wasteful spending of its taxpayers’ incomes, or people not receiving a decent education, or homeless and starving people. Or at least there would be very little of that. Instead the people would be in control and would not stand for corruption and ineptitude. No longer would politicians have salaries far beyond the average citizen’s; and they would be held accountable for their actions. And there would be no need for a huge tax or welfare system.
While we spend millions of dollars combating the drug dealers, and faulting them with the addictions of the people, millions of addicts go untreated and ignored. Families like mine struggle to find help with our addict and yet are forced to pay for a drug war that has not only failed miserably but has also changed the face of an entire country for the worse. While those who make weapons and ammunition become more powerful and wealthy, we become poorer and our voices go unheard.
And my child remains lost to me. I miss you.
