© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Comedian W. C. Fields joked,
"The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep." That is like the
solutions our leaders have for America's problems of illegal drug use and poverty.
Over the last sixty years our leaders have filled to overflowing our court
system with non-violent illegal drug users. And our leaders have dramatically
increased the number of people on welfare.
Neither solution over the years has even
started to eradicate the problems. Worse, it seems the best minds in our
society can only come up with things that make the problems worse. We have more
illegal drug use and more poverty now after spending billions of dollars.
Tragically both leave lots of human
carnage in their wake and lost opportunities for generations. It would be nice
if we apply Thomas Edison's view of failure. He referred to inventions that
didn't work by saying, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways
that won't work." In each case he tried something different.
Our leaders cannot see different
solutions for poverty and illegal drug use other than what we have been doing
for sixty years. Albert Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing
over and over again and expecting different results."
Part of the problem is that crime
and welfare are huge industrial complexes with billions of dollars to employ
people. If you no longer need all of those police and prison workers do we have
anyone who could fire a million government workers? Politically it is
impossible. But it needs to be done.
Poverty is not because other people
are successful. Poverty is because people do not have the desired productive
skills or inclinations to use their skills. Welfare stalls people from jobs
because they lose benefits.
Poverty doesn't cause crime.
Criminal behavior and illegal drug use are mental illnesses. I am not saying ignore
or release them because it is an illness. But before we find a solution we must
correctly identify the problem. We must frame as mental illness the disregard of
society's rules.
Putting millions of Americans into
the legal system because of their choice for themselves of taking drugs does
not work. One approach is to view illegal drug use as a health problem rather a
criminal offense. Portugal did so in 2001. The results are compelling.
I am not involved in the illegal drug question personally.
A few years ago a speaker said, "All you people from the sixties spent
your time in college partying and smoking dope." I raised my hand and
said, "Did not!" If drugs were all legal I would still only be
medicated by coffee and green chile.
The reason I am looking to Portugal
along with twenty-five other nations is that over fifty years as a journalist I
have watched our drug policies fail miserably. Drugs are as available now as
fifty years ago, according to people who know.
I believe that the correct direction
for our country was mentioned by Herbert Hoover in 1928 as he was campaigning
to be elected President of the United States. He said, "We have not yet
reached the goal but... we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the
day when poverty shall be banished from this nation. There is no guarantee
against poverty equal to a job for every man."
Our nation can become great when we
allow people to become more productive, to use their natural talents and
abilities in jobs. Jobs are the great changer of a society. The free market is
the engine of prosperity. The enemy of prosperity is government people who want
to control the free market.
Every rule or regulation that diminishes
the ability of people to be productive moves people toward poverty. It is not
something that can be legislated. Everyone is either moving toward poverty or
not. Change the drug laws to treat it as an illness and not something to fund
our vast law-enforcement/judicial/prison industries.
I hope Winston Churchill was right
when he wrote, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing -
after they've tried everything else." We've tried all those things that
don't work, let's try something different.
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