Schools, Hospitals or Prison..The United States Other Failed War..Part 1

The United States in addicted to its addiction. Regarding our failed war on drugs (which is actually a war on people)is acting in the same way as an addict would. Addicts often deny the facts of their addiction and are often in denial. In 1973,President Nixon ignored the Schafer Report (The National Commission On Marijuana and Drug Abuse) that basically said that "neither the marijuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to the public." In 1976 President Carter promised to decriminalize marijuana. Both instances show how a closed family system, the addict and its enablers-won't allow for new information that goes against ingrained beliefs. The addiction is perpetuated politically and culturally in the same way families do. Alcohol and cigarettes have a most devastating effects on people. Alcohol due to its ingrained enmeshment (like in the addicts family where boundaries are blurred) political influence(spelled lobbying and political contributions are woven into the fabric of our culture. Alcohol use is culturally enabled in spite of its documented role in child abuse, spousal abuse,assaults, auto accidents and fatalities, and homicides.
Addicts often put their families at risk in a number of ways. They spend limited family resources on their addiction-affecting the health,education,safety of their families again denying the effects and consequences of their addiction for yet another fix. US drug policy costs all levels of government about $44 billion a year in enforcement. $280 billion a year is spend on policing and prisons. Our streets are often like war zones where concerns for turf wars due the profits of substance abuse put innocent people often fatally at risk. These figures don't even begin to quantify the effects on children growing up in a family where one parent is incarcerated for a substance abuse arrest.(Part 2 upcoming)
Take the money we spend on the risky behavior of our addiction to our failed drug policy,put those funds back into the budget see how it re frames the current health care debate and the failure of education in the US.
Addicts and their enablers have problems with recovery..a loss of the ability to make life affirming choices. With addicts the decision making process is often "all or nothing'" Those choices are often the flip side of the same coin. Drink-act out or don't. They are the same sides of the same coin. There is an inability to see that there are often more than the two choices.
This is whee the enablers come in-