An American Lion

It’s time to fundamentally realign our resources and fight a different war on drugs:

Substance abuse and addiction cost federal, state and local governments at least $467 billion annually according to a recent study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. Nearly 96 percent of that is spent on the “human wreckage” of substance abuse — including drug-related crime, incarceration, health care, foster care. About 1.9 percent goes to prevention and treatment, the report says.

Due to recession-fed state and local budget problems, the law enforcement, court, and prison systems in most states are strapped. At the same time, drug treatment and prevention programs — underfunded, advocates say, even in better times — are struggling with shrinking resources.

“The recession has been really tough for providers as well as patients,” said Daniel Guarnera, director of government relations for NAADAC, a national association for addiction professionals.

In Elkhart, meth is not the only illegal drug, but it is the one that has dealt the hardest blow to its working class gut, bringing down many men and women who staff the area’s RV factories. Over the course of the recession, at least one aspect of the problem has worsened: By mid-November of this year, Elkhart County had discovered more than 100 meth labs, compared to 75 in 2008, and 77 from 1999 through 2006, according to State Police records.

Now, I break with my conservative roots when I talk about the legalization of marijuana. The fact is, it’s not really an addictive drug, like we thought. People aren’t chemically transformed by it the way they are with crystal methamphetamine. It’s well past the time to legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana and use the resources currently being used against it to treat the people ravaged by meth.

We have finite resources, and we cannot just raise taxes to solve every societal problem. We cannot continue spending money like it doesn’t matter because we’re creating a massive debt bomb that is going to hinder our ability to grow our economy. We can’t justify spending billions to remain at war when we’re being hollowed out here at home. Heroin is another scourge, and despite all that we’re doing in Afghanistan, heroin flows out of that country like water through a sieve. There are always going to be drug addicts. That’s just human nature. There should be a means by which we treat them medically, not treat them with prison.

Now that Mike Huckabee is finished in politics, someone needs to step up and move on this issue in order to take it away from the Democrats. Can you imagine the sea change in American politics if the Republican Party were to present a sensible plan to legalize marijuana and take care of the meth problem? Meth is a red and blue state issue, and as these tough times continue, you can’t help but wonder why we aren’t doing more to save our own people.