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coca leaf

Submitted January 14, 2005 - 11:46 am by Don Henry Ford Jr.
I like the idea of legalizing the leaf.

And to be honest, I don't personally care about others doing all the drugs they want to do.

I just don't believe you'll be able to sell this to the American public.

In Holland for example, legalizing marijuana in controlled situations has worked well. But when they allowed people to go to a certain park to shoot hard drugs, it did not work. Dead bodies every morning. People who would not attend to their needs.

You ever take a close look at a heroin junkie's arm and hollow unseeing eyes?

I am one who spent many nights chopping cocaine until my eyes would not focus, my heart racing to the point of quitting, yet chopping away nonetheless. Unless you have experienced this, you cannot understand the power this drug can have over people.

I know it has medicinal uses and should be legal for such. But if legalized, you might as well throw away the entire system of drug control, prescription medication, etc.

This will not happen.

Do away with the current system of punishment. Yes.

Legalize. No.

Drug abuse should be treated as the illness it is, not as a crime.

Laws should be written for the best interests of the people, using some common sense.

You don't give a gun to a kid. Or show them porno flicks in school. And you don't give substances to people that will overcome their will and put them on a path of self destruction.

Look, I respect the argument. My mentor where writing is concerned, Charles Bowden, shares the view that all of this should be legalized. And he is a very intelligent man.

But I just don't think many that express that view have been as far down the path of addiction as I once was.

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