Having written a similar piece for the Amarillo Globe-News a few years back, several books on the issue and now being as substance abuse student with Dr. Robert Banks, I have a uniquely different opinion of these issues.
I too think the war on drugs is lost, but not from the same legalization standpoint as Robinson.
As the price of the war on drugs reaches a trillion dollars, Americans continue to purchase 70 percent of the world’s illegal drugs; these billion- dollar overseas operations are indeed failures.
That money is better spent elsewhere in the substance abuse fields. My delight in Robinson soon died when I realized that he is really a legalization liberal who does not fully grasp the severity of this process. Legalization works in other countries because their laws are much more strict.
In Turkey, you are allowed your “dose” of hashish each day. Yet at the same time, if you have more than your daily dose of hashish, you are ushered into the court square and killed as a drug dealer.
So, to agree with Robinson and the other liberal legalizers, we first must be rid of the right-to-lifers who go about stopping all capital punishment warrants.
Next is the absurd idea that medical cannabis is supposed to be smoked. Medical cannabis comes in pill form, and when you sincerely need cannabis for pain, you are then willing to take the pill, not light up.
To watch as Southern California liberals and Colorado Springs hippies cry for legalization only so they are able to “toke with the buds” is an assault on my senses as a substance abuse specialist.
To know that toking is nothing more than an addiction in itself and has nothing to do with pain or eyesight suggests that you and I are stupid and the stoner is the only one with any intelligence.
Robinson leaves out the most vital and lasting part of this entire equation: quality control. As an advocate for legalization, he must have taken into consideration that quality in America is primo.
The federal government has. In fact, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. has a factory ready to produce cannabis packs as we speak. It won’t help.
The American pothead wants the best pot in the entire world. They require more than just a standardized pill or cigarette; they want bud with no stem or seed.
Robinson is right that pot is not physically addictive. But the process and the lifestyle both are mentally and spiritually addictive to those labeled “stoners.”
Yes, America needs to redefine the addict/criminal idea formulated in the 1940s and 1950s. We in the business are. Yes, America needs to redefine its prisons and its penal codes. We are trying. And yes, the massive spending in Colombia, Afghanistan and other nations no bigger than New York or New Jersey needs to stop unless we are willing to wipe out entire crops. But legalization as Robinson suggests is not the answer America needs. It will change nothing while creating yet another bureaucracy of liberal lawmakers with their proverbial hand in the cookie jar.
There is one more thought I want to present to this idea: If North Texas already has a giant teen pregnancy rate, if STDs in North Texas and New Mexico are on the rise again, what one thing needs to be considered? Gateway drugs like alcohol and pot.
As more parents take the road that Robinson does, we see a huge growth in the less noticeable traits of stoners and junkies: sexually exchanged illness.
Pot lowers the human conscience and convinces young men and women that things are acceptable. Change is good. Debate is great. Legalization is not.
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