Children should be exposed to drugs for what they are, not evil

By Chris Dobson

Squint your eyes with me and let us look at history. It’s been screaming like a middle child trying to get somebody’s attention. Last week one of the most “distinguished” among us, United States Senator Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., used a derogatory racist comment when discussing problems facing our nation.

Wouldn’t the world be better if we could only just enslave those people who weren’t like us? If we could just make something illegal that would keep all those pesky drug users where they belong. Welcome to the war on some drugs.

Now I don’t know about you, but I’m discouraged that America has surpassed 2 million prisoners in jail or prison, as well as another 3 million in other forms of supervision. I find it horrific that people still think we are in the land of the free, and that we live in the home of the brave. Brave people would stand up and tell the government that drug use is a personal decision, when conducted in private, whether you want to smoke pot, snort cocaine, drink beer or smoke cigarettes.

How many people remember the beautiful Republican National Convention held in Philadelphia? It was so glitzy and choreographed that professional wrestlers around the world were astonished.

While giving Senatorial courtesy to drug dealers like Strom Thurmond and the rest of the tobacco owners and their nefarious lobbiers, tobacco kills more people then any other drug, and it’s legal. An overdose of marijuana has never killed anybody, and it’s illegal. Does it make sense to you? If so, please write in. I can’t seem to get my brain around it. People smoke and drink knowing these are the drugs of death, but why are they mandated as the legal drugs when there are so many other drugs without the mortality rate that offer better experiences?

Meanwhile, the Republicans up on Capitol Hill introduced the Methamphetimines Anti-proliferation Act. This law makes information illegal about distribution, manufacture or production of drugs. This would remove all debate on the subject. They are making ideas illegal. This removes the market place for free exchange of ideas, making the United States even less democratic and thus more totalitarian in nature. One of the few beauties left about America is that at the minimum we can speak our minds. Granted, corporations with no minds or interests in the real world except profit are given all the press time they can afford, but we people can still speak. Give them time and this, too, will be lost as well. Silence is death for so many people. Don’t allow them to remove the voice of anyone.

I hear over and over about the children, how we need to protect them and set an example for them. I love children too, but I love adults, and I don’t think one should be sacrificed for the other. Children don’t need to grow up thinking drugs are bad. Children need to grow up and make their own mind up about drugs.

What does a child think when police officers tell him that pot smokers are criminals and then goes home to his parents who smoke pot recreationally? I wonder if children will ever think for themselves again.

I was in one of the first Drug Abuse Resistance Education classes in Arlington, and looking back, I realize now that that class had nothing to do with abuse and everything to do with use. If they really wanted to end abuse, they would teach children to think for themselves and not conform. They would set up more rehabilitation programs, not jails. Instead, they tell children what to think and say “Just say ‘No’” and then send anyone to jail who does not conform.

The Jews were scapegoats in Germany, but few know that after World War I there was a counter culture movement in Germany and the drug users and “hippies” were the first to become outcasts. Brothers and sisters, we have no farther to look then our own front doors, 2 million in jail and we already have a system of camps set up for ‘detainees.’

From now on, instead of being proud that you are a “ditto head,” refuse the crown and think for yourself. Refuse to watch the TV and search the Internet or a library for articles that provide alternative points of view. Stop settling for what they give you, and actively search out your own philosophies and paradigms. But most importantly, make noise, and let people know that you’re alive and fighting. Otherwise, no one will notice if you’re gone.

Chris Dobson is a senior history and political science major from Arlington.
He can be reached at (c.p.dobson@student.tcu.edu).

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