Monday, November 05, 2007

Addiction should Never be Treated as a Crime

"Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users."

- Ralf Nader

3 comments:

Webs said...

Well criminalizing drugs was probably one of the stupidest things this country has ever done. Instead of making money off of taxing marijuana we spend $20,000 to keep them locked up. That's just what it costs to keep em in a pen, not including the money spent on catching them. Which right now overall is toward the tune of $20 Billion a year last time I checked.

And many marijuana users are tax paying citizens. But once locked up they don't pay any taxes.

Paul Sunstone said...

Unfortunately, Webs, there is a powerful lobby in favor of keeping the current drug laws. Nothing like a lobby to perpetuate a stupidity.

Anonymous said...

It never ceases to amaze me how addiction and drugs are so demonized. How we ever got to a place where putting a substance in your body, or providing such a substance to another carries more severe legal penalties than ending another person's life is beyond me.