Drug lords Winning in Two Ways

We live in troubling times. What used to be a nuisance (drugs) has now engulfed our nation and changed our society and legal system. Drug lords are winning in two ways:

First they still get drugs into the country or make them here and manage to recruit users from elementary school level (not just in schools) and by the time they are teenagers they are proficient in the language and process of procurement of drugs, should they desire them. If a pusher can get them to take that first free hit, they are usually hooked by the drug and the false pleasure it brings. The habit continues and escalates as they go into adulthood without maturing into adults. We end up with a society of grown bodies but immature minds. They are like people with split personalities. The user will function as an adult in some ways, i.e. working and living on their own (for a time) but when it comes to proper judgment calls, they are still stuck in their adolescence. So, the pushers have a ready market. As the older users become wrecked physically and cannot hold down a job to support their habit, they become a burden of the legal system where they will either go into the prison system or support the legal system in fines.

Second, the drug lords have succeeded by changing the legal system and the attitudes of law enforcement. It seems everything is centered around drugs. Those other crimes are simply incidental to the job of law enforcement. Every stop by law enforcement becomes a combat situation while the officer expects every stop to be a confrontation with strung-out drug users. Gone is the courteous officer, who speaks politely to a citizen of a democratic society. They have stopped the enemy and the enemy must be jerked around and slammed onto car hoods. Anyone associated with the 'criminal' must be treated as a co-conspirator. So, the legal system is clogged up with user-victims of the pusher, while the pusher goes about his business of getting new recruits. Every resource is used to catch the drug addict. The pusher has already paid his way and in many cases the legal system has been corrupted. It appears that the problem is being addressed with all the arrest but the real problem is seldom addressed: the big time pushers.

I am not one who believes that all cops are crooked. I do believe that people live in fear of retaliation in this country. Obviously, the user will not report their supplier for two reasons. One is fear. The other is turning in their source for future drugs. A good cop would be putting his job and life in jeopardy if he reported corruption, especially if it was dominate in the force. We will never know because allegations will never be investigated. It should be obvious that someone is on the take when government officials live so much above citizens financially.

My solution, if there is one, would be to treat all drug addicts like victims and provide them with treatment instead of tossing them in jail and collecting money from them which parents must often come up with to try to help their children. Drug addicts are causalities of a war that law enforcement is loosing in a big way. If the drug addict were taken out of the arrest tally, results against this plague would be shameful.

I am convinced that even good elected law enforcement people should be replaced periodically to discourage the infiltration of drug money and the corruption of officials. Entrenched, appointed officials should also be replaced but that would be difficult because they are in-fact entrenched with the people who are the movers and shakers in a given county.

Conclusion. The old argument of supply and demand is just that an old argument. They say stop using and drug lords will stop making the stuff. My answer is: When they train our children to use drugs how exactly are we going to convince their drug stained mind to stop using when their judgment is already ruined. If their teeth are rotten, we take away their sweets, so why tell them to stop using drugs and we will stop the bad people from making them. No. We should be taking away the 'sweets' and treating the damage it has done. Not punishing the victim. From a legal standpoint (if I was qualified to argue the point), a person who has once used could be said to be mentally incapable of knowing what they were doing at the time of the second offense. Their mind has been altered, has it not?