Myrtle Beach: In your new war on heroin, don’t forget harm caused by ‘War on Drugs’
Drug war is nonsensical
Last night I attended the heroin awareness meeting at the recreation center on the former Air Force base in Myrtle Beach.
The turnout was enormous! The mayor asked people to cooperate with police so that we “can solve this problem.”
But the problem of addiction is something that law enforcement and the community will never “solve,” just as we could not “solve” alcoholism through prohibition.
In 1980, there were 377,175 arrests for drug offenses in the U.S. In 2014, there were 1,561,231!
The federal budget for National Drug Control for 2015 was $25 billion. I don't know how many brave law enforcement officers have been killed or injured overs these decades fighting the war on drugs, but surely hundreds. Millions of people have gone to prison. And yet we have not made even a little dent in drug abuse.
Our addicts have a medical problem. Putting thousands of people in jail every year for drug offenses (buying and selling) is not helping anyone. We should stop hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer. We'll feel better.
Robert E. Dwyer, Myrtle Beach
This story was originally published August 19, 2016 at 10:30 AM with the headline "Myrtle Beach: In your new war on heroin, don’t forget harm caused by ‘War on Drugs’."