From: doctor1@cbnewse.cb.att.com (patrick.b.hailey)
Subject: Re: Legalizing drugs
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 08:58:07 GMT

In article <rabjab.224.721014274@golem.ucsd.edu> rabjab@golem.ucsd.edu (Jeff Bytof) writes:
>Another problem is that the costs to the health system

American Psychologist, a peer review journal, reported on a 15 year study
of San Francisco area children by researchers Jonathan Shedler and Jack
Block of the University of California at Berkeley.  They found that
teenagers who occasionally used drugs were healthier than both drug abusers
and abstainers, and that teenage drug abusers had distinct behavioral
problems that were identifiable years before drug use began.

Studies published by the federal government show that illicit drug users at
Utah Power and Light had lower health benefit costs than non-users (by an
average of $215 per employee per year); that Georgia Power Company
employees using illicit drugs had lower absentee rates and higher promotion
rates than non-users; that marijuana users had absentee rates 30 percent
lower than other employees.

Oh, wait, maybe you're worried about the high cost of "crack babies".  Yea,
that's it, 375,000 crack babies born every year, each requiring $500,000 to
$1 million in medical care.  Isn't that how the battle cry goes?  (Well, it
did in 1991, anyway.  No doubt the warriors are using bigger numbers now.) 
That's $375 *billion* dollars!

Hmm...  Well, according to the 'Statistical Abstract of the United States
1990', the grand total of all health expenditures by consumers, government,
and philanthropies, including nursing home expenditures, prescriptions,
research, office calls, even hospital construction costs in 1987 was $500
billion.  Costs for all hospital care was $195 billion.  Crack baby
expenditures cited by drug warriors are 2 times the total sum spent for all
care for all persons in all hospitals in 1987.

If I were you, I would stop worrying about these health care costs, as they
are pretty obviously mythical.

For the most part, so are crack babies.  375,000 crack babies translates to
about 9.4% of live births - a horrific number, to be sure.  But we now know
(although drug indocrinati..er,..education programs seem have conveniently
not gotten the word) that a single exposure to cocaine rarely devastates a
fetus.  To cause the horrible problems we see with alcohol syndrome babies,
a woman probably has to abuse cocaine the way alcoholics abuse alcohol. 
Considering this, "9.4% of live births" means an *awful lot* of women
are abusing cocaine in a *big* way.

Or are they?  As of 1990, the federal government estimates that the number
of woman of child bearing age - let alone pregnant - using cocaine in all
its forms is:...well, they don't have an estimate.  The number of woman in
this age group using cocaine is so small that the professional
statisticians working for the federal government can't make an estimate.

We have plenty of babies harmed by poverty, by alcohol, by tobacco, by
drug-using moms in general, but to single out crack is folly.  We don't
have a drug addiction epidemic harming babies, we have a poverty epidemic
harming babies.  Most of the people using drugs to escape reality have
clean urine.

Of course, the number of happy, healthy, responsible drug users is
shrinking:

1) As during alcohol prohibition, responsible people are less likely to do
the prohibited thing.  This helps no one, as responsible users are, by
definition, not a problem.
2) As during alcohol prohibition, we see a harshening of usage patterns. 
In terms of alcohol, people are much more likely to binge drink on most
anything that comes along when they have no idea when the next drink will
become available.  This is exactly the kind of behavior that tends to make
addicts out of people who would not otherwise become addicts.
3) Related to 2), above, there are no responsible users to act as role
models.  During alcohol prohibition, people did not see other people
drinking responsibly. 
4) Also related to 2) above, the harshest and cheapest substances are
favored.  Moonshine over beer, crack over coca tea or powder.
5) During the late sixties and throughout the seventies, when illicit drug
use was "less prohibited", people were much more likely to get their drugs
from friends who liked the same drugs, as opposed to professional
criminals.  Today's harsh, ruthless prohibition makes marijuana more
expensive than crack, pushes users underground, and discourages the more
casual use and sale of drugs.  Hanging out with hardened criminals or
habitual (not casual) drug users is not healthy in all sorts of ways, and
does not encourage happiness, responsibility, or moderation.
6) We see increasing enforcement among the happy, healthy users, sice they
have more good stuff to seize.  (Of course, we see more of this happening
to people who never had anything to do with drugs at all, but that's
another subject.)

So, we eliminate or ignore the happy, healthy, responsible users; pursue
policies that vastly increase the number of irresponsible users; then
highlight them and claim that getting rid of the policies that perpetuate
this kind of tragedy will only make the tragedy worse.  Huh?

Let's look at it another way.  We know that alcohol addiction, alcohol
overdoses, and youthful involvement all increased during alcohol
prohibition.  We know that liver disease began to increase steadily a few
years after prohibition started and only started decreasing several years
after prohibition ended.  We know that there was no organized crime before
prohibition.  We know that alcohol money financed police and government
corruption at all levels.  We saw people loose respect for the law.  We saw
gangs, street crime, drive-by shootings, and neighborhoods ruined by the
alcohol trade.

What you are saying is that we should never have re-legalized alcohol,
because all these problems would grow worse.  Well, the murder rate in the
United States dropped for 12 years straight after prohibition was repealed
(although America was never again as peaceful as she was before the
prohibitionists had their way with her).  It took longer to see the
alcoholism and liver disease rates fall, of course, but once the majority of
prohibition's tragic victims died, the rates did fall.

Finally, even many of the warriors admit that it's drug prohibition, not
drug use, that is responsible for the most incredible rise in violence this
country has ever seen.  (Most prefer to say "drug trafficking", but I see
tobacco and liquor being "trafficked" all the time, and it doesn't seem to
cause much violence.)  I wonder what the health care costs associated with
that are?

So I ask you, in the face of the facts (and not D.A.R.E. propaganda), how
do you support your position?  

If you just don't like drug use, fine, don't use them and teach your family
to do the same.  If you don't like drug users, fine, don't hang around with
them and legalize drugs in order to minimize the impact they have on your
life.  (Although, as we've seen, you probably hang around with a lot of
drug users but don't know it.  If you can't tell without testing their
urine, then what possible reason could you have for declaring a war on
them?  They are just normal folks).

In the face of the facts, the only possible reason for supporting
the holy jihad on drug users is that you enjoy the mayhem and carnage.  The
more you learn about the people in charge of drug policy and drug
education, the more you realize that that's what they are in it for.  To be
much more polite than the situation calls for, I'll just say that I don't
support public policy based on hate-mongering and war-mongering.

   Thanks awfully,
              Patrick

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