The Worst Message Ever Sent
Our Government has been willing to let people die rather than ’send the wrong message’. Clean needles provided cheaply and easily would clearly save lives and money. Attempts to save these lives and reduce the medical expenses drastically have been denied for years ostensibly for this comparatively frivolous reason. The certain deaths that have resulted are the cost of what I suppose they would call ‘the right message’. We are willing to let you die because you are not the way we want you to be.
As if this were not bad enough our country’s drug law sends the most destructive and the most false message possible. The message is “you cannot control your appetites without laws preventing personal choices”. Why else would there be laws intended to prevent personal consumption of anything? This very ugly idea is breathed life because of the trust most Americans have for their government. It is simply a betrayal of trust, even when well intentioned. Every time you separate man from his behavior you strip him of his dignity, his identity, and his freedom.
The regulations involving drug laws speak of ‘public safety’ as though the drugs being criminalized were being used to build unsafe roads. They allude to impure or improperly prepared drugs as the need for their action, but the criminal law that rest on this lie is clearly a war on people. These laws to regulate inanimate, non-virulent and non-explosive objects have led to more suffering than all the wars in history. “Public safety†has not even been defined legally, much less shown to be at risk.
Criminal drug law is killing our children. They get the message, and feel its point. They do not trust their elders. They fear them. They see through the thinly veiled sophistry of prohibition. The overt and brutal manipulation of a free society must stop. This hideous contempt for man and his freedom is a clear message to our children. It must stop.
Rick Wolfe