I think it is wrong to deprive people in need of relief of their medicine unless we also can relieve them of their pain. The do no harm principle.

In any case it doesn’t work. We have been at it in this country for over 90 years. Success rate? Zero. Oh we can bust sellers. Which is another way of saying we can create market openings for new entrants. We can jail users (who just get their supplies in jail).

What does work is substituting less harmful drugs (like pot) for more harmful ones like alcohol, tobacco, and heroin. In fact such substitution therapy (using cannabis extract) was common in the early 1900s.

BTW tobacco is an anti-depressant. In other words we don’t have a tobacco problem. We have a depression problem.

In addition persecuting the traumatized is morally banckrupt.

A lot of people being abused by the government.

Typically war zones and repressive regimes create a lot of PTSD. In the general human population about 20% are susceptable to long term PTSD. Conditions in the Iraq war zone for instance are such that 18% of returning soldiers have long term PTSD problems. The more severe the trauma the stronger the drugs needed to counteract it.

You can get some idea of how severe conditions are in Iran by the percentage of folks who are long term heroin users. In America in the generalpopulation about 2% are heroin users. A rate that has been fairly steady for 100 years.

Alcohol consumption can be another marker.

In early America alcohol consumption was very high. The per capita use declined very significantly from 1800 to 1900 as economic and social conditions improved.

The way to correct unemployment among teens (where the rate is much higher) is to let them compete by price, that is, to eliminate minimum wage laws. Not likely though.

As for causing them all to go cold turkey–all the mullahs would have to do is tell them that the Americans in Iraq and Afganistan have their heroin piled up in warehouses, creating a spontaneous civilian invasion in both directions!

I do find it interesting that just like the U.S., Iran pretends to wage a “War on Drugs” while their economy doesn’t create sufficient jobs for its people.

I don’t think we can solve the world’s problems, but I do think we can give some people hope.

As for the world’s rancor, what is new?

The odd thing is our socalled standing in the Muslim world is by all accounts better than it was a few years ago. It seems the some of the folks that are not stoned are beginning to wonder if there is more to life than being blown up.

As for the Europeans, they are a lost cause. They had their chance and other than two world wars and a destroyed Africa I fail to see what they have to brag about.

I remember reading something back when the Taliban were around to the effect that they were selling a lot of heroin to Iran even then.

Maybe the authorities should just use a fungus on all those poppies and destroy the whole crop.

Let them all go cold turkey.

Amazing how the Left/Democrat share tactics!

See GatewayPundit’s great posts on the East

St. Louis vote buying. And remember the ACT

organized who was paying her registrations collectors in crack.

Dumb them down so they only understand “bumper

sticker” messages, keep them poor and stupid so

they are victims, keep their dealers and the

gangs out of jail by fighting long sentences,

and to provide jobs for all the social “science”

grads,and best of all throw in “Moral Relativity”,

have Hollywood show how harmless and fun is a

little weed, a little blow.

The left and the Islamists have a lot in common,

this is just another point.

Has anyone every released studies of illegal drug use by the Left vs the Right. (Martini’s and

Mint Juleps are not illegal drugs!)

If this theory is true, it doesn’t bode very well for the future of Islam.

I’m as much in favor of having the American government fix the world’s problems as the next guy, but how realistic is it? Under Bush II we’ve made two attempts to fix two of the world’s most brutal horrible dictatorships and we’ve managed to earn the permanent rancor of most of the world and half of our own population in the process.