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Readers Respond: War on Drugs (Part 2) |
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From Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs News: Joined Together received an unprecedented number of passionate, thoughtful responses to "Mission Accomplished" in War on Drugs? Cancer a Better Analogy for Drug Problem It's easy to characterize overcoming an evil entity as a war; that notion makes the fight righteous. Cancer is preventable in many cases, it can be treated, treatment often works for a while as the cancer goes into remission, but there is relapse. Cancer can affect anyone at any time: it has affected every family in our nation, just as addiction, and there are tremendous costs in human life. Waiting to Surrender What would we say about a war in which our military tells enemies who want to surrender, "You'll have to wait? It's a war we all need to fight on behalf of children of addicted parents, an invisible mass of kids (one out of every four in this country) whose needs still are not being met, even though they carry the burden of the transgenerational effects of alcoholism and other substance abuse. They believe they will be failures because they think that what's happening at home is their fault, and they live with the legacy of silent shame they have inherited -- believing it because our society reinforces the shame with silence. Humans Are Biologically Prone to Substance Abuse The very tiny impact that billions of dollars and decades of attempts at regulating and suppressing human substance use has had underscores the important fact that drug warriors want to ignore: that human beings are genetically predisposed to want the altered states that drugs (including caffeine, nicotine and alcohol) produce.
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