The Editor's Desk

The original headline for today’s editorial about drug use and the drug war was “We are all on drugs.” However, after a discussion in the newsroom I ultimately decided that there probably is not a significant amount of overlap between Desert Dispatch opinion page readers and Weezer fans and I might get some angry calls from people thinking I was accusing them of being on drugs.

Seriously though, I do want to add a little more insight to my attitude about the drug war. Libertarians are known for their attitude in favor of drug legalization. Also, and not entirely unrelated, many libertarians are perceived to be casual drug users.

I don’t touch drugs, at all. I rarely even drink alcohol. I want to make it clear that my attitude toward drug use is not based on some naive idea that drugs are not dangerous or a problem. My attitude is based on the belief that families and friends are better resources in helping deal with these problems than the government, and there’s a lot of information out there that backs up my view.

On a personal level, I’m a child of the drug war. I turn 37 on Monday, so it was interesting to me to notice that I’ve essentially lived my entire life in this fight. Drug use tore my family apart when I was a child. I don’t care to get into the details of it, but it was devastating. I know what drug abuse can do to people. Subconsciously, I’ve made many decisions about my life to make sure I never become one of those people.

But I also know what families can do. We put ourselves back together (well, really, it was my father’s hard work that did it). Government intervention did not play a role. If the government had gotten involved in this situation when it was at its worst, who knows what would have happened? I and my sister might have become wards of the state, and as difficult as things were, I can’t imagine such a turn of events working out better for me.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:38 am and is filed under Commentary, Libertarianism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.