Throw 'em all in the clink!

So, I am entirely anti-drug but still I can’t say I am in favor of legalizing drug use, the pain they bring into the world is too great.

On the other hand I really don’t like the way our nation fights drugs. Using the law to go after big time drug cartels in one thing, putting all our police force time and money onto arresting users is another. The federal government spends about $600 per second on the drug war. State governments spend ½ again more. We fill our jails with people who were only trying to feel good when they don’t feel good. We give someone guilty of ‘possession’ more punishment than someone who steals the retirement fund of all his employees. We often give them more punishment than child abusers. Sometimes we even punish them more severely than murderers.

I don’t want people to take drugs. I don’t think any good will ever come of such behavior. However, a better way to keep that from happening might be education. Lets spend some of the money we waste arresting and punishing users on teaching them the truth about drug use.

Punish people for illegal acts committed while on drugs, such as robbing stores or hurting others. Those things are already against the law. The idea of someone sitting quietly in their house smoking pot may be a sleazy and rather disgusting thought, but it certainly doesn’t bring the same depth of disgust as someone going out and robbing another at gunpoint, running over someone while drunk, or beating someone up to prove they can.

Helping people get off of an addiction without punishment would bring more results than punishing them when it is discovered that they use.

Conspiring men in the last days

At one time I thought any time you were ill the best thing you could do was visit the doctor who would help you get well. I no longer think doctors will do that.

Now I am even leery of prescription drugs. There are too many side effects. Nearly all prescription drugs are based on the way some natural plant affects the body. However, there is no profit in something natural, so they make a chemical version in order “that they can control the dosage” (really so that they can patent their version) and charge us a fortune for it. Drugs that cost 2-3 cents a dose to manufacture cost the public 2-3 dollars to use. I have no problem with a reasonable profit, but this is highway robbery!!! Drug companies are not our friends!

I may sound paranoid to some of you but I really believe most of the diseases we treat could be cured. Drugs could be made that actually got rid of nearly everything. They probably have already been invented. Many problems can be treated or cured with proper nutrition.

The problem there for the medical community is that, well, obviously, they can’t actually cure us! The money is made in treating problems, not in getting rid of them! So they are gleeful when they find that we have heart disease, or diabetes, or malaria, or depression or any other disease they can treat and monitor. We have to come in, and keep coming in forever.

Doctors will experiment on finding the reason for one single symptom until they see we are catching on to what they are doing, then they will say that they think these two things might be related, when they knew all along that all your symptoms are from one single cause. They will drag out a diagnosis for as long as they can. In fact, they are taught to do this in med school!

Health care is all about profit and not at all about health.

Since I no longer trust doctors I think I will always go for the most natural ‘cure’ first from now on. Usually diet, then look for the herbs that will treat. I have friends who think I am crazy, but frankly, from my own experience, those chemical versions of things are horrible to the body!!!

Legal addictive substances

I understand the need to self-medicate pain, including emotional pain. However, I also know from years of experience that illegal drugs are the worst way to treat. Much better to get high on serving others, or on a good book, or on doing something cool with family or friends. People who bring you drugs do so for their own purposes, and their purposes are NOT to help you! Mostly it is to line their own pockets. To some extent it is to “convert you to (their) own bad habits.” (Haywood Smith –Red Hats) As in: misery loves company. We really thought at one time that smoking pot was safer than getting drunk, but it isn’t true. Everyone I know who took hard drugs started with pot, or Valium, or Viverin (a simple upper from the old days. Maybe caffeine?) If you do real research into the problems pot causes, as opposed to ‘how can I justify smoking pot’, you will find it isn’t at all as innocuous as we once thought. (Do you know that the “pot” available now is 3 times as strong as what was available when I was young? Guess why?)

I don’t like the idea of turning control of my body over to anyone else – including the petty crook whose first interest is to get you hooked either to justify his own use or to line his own pockets. Certainly not to the leader of a high powered drug cartel who would kill anyone who got in the way of his profit. I don’t want to turn control of my life over to business people either.

Some of you have heard me talk about an article in National Geographic about caffeine. (early 2005 – you can look it up online) These people, and they are business people, who add caffeine to all kinds of drinks and foods to ‘increase your stamina’ or to ‘boost your metabolism’ are actually doing it entirely for the profit it brings. An effective advertising campaign! Caffeine is addictive and they know it. They will even add it to lemonade so you will buy their brand always. They have gotten a few doctors to endorse the caffeine craze. However, a legitimate doctor who cares about health will tell you that caffeine is associated with infertility, Meniere’s disease, insomnia, sudden infant death syndrome, fibrocystic disease of the breasts and gastrointestinal problems, it elevates stress levels and encourages the problems that lead to diabetes, leads to nutritional deficiencies as well as others I can’t remember and don’t want to look up right now. (see Ensign, July 2008)

To me, the biggest problem there is insomnia. I have enough trouble sleeping without drinking something with caffeine in it. The tiniest bit of caffeine makes me unable to sleep at all. Have you ever read up on the chronic sleep deprivation problem we are facing nowadays?

Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs out there, and yet, cigarette manufacturers will add other things to their product to make them even more addictive. There is nothing good about smoking-the only way they would ever sell is if the cigarettes are addictive, so naturally, even if it is well proven that smoking encourages the growth of every kind of cancer and causes many other diseases and even death, they will do all they can to try to sell to everyone. Profit is all to these people.

(Note: legal addictive substances include some over the counter medications.)

Alcohol is also addictive, and certainly leads to overuse and bad choices in many people. If you are one of those people who are genetically disposed towards alcoholism, (and everyone in my family probably is- see ancestor history) then it certainly can topthe ranks of the addictive substances.

I have no desire to make rich those whose whole purpose is to harm me and mine.

Why I don't take drugs.

See, the thing is, I did take drugs once. Well 3 times to be exact. I was young, it was the time and place for it (hippy – you know?) and I had much anger and rebellion in me. I pretty much did it to make my dad mad and because he had accused me of it so many times already. Of course, I didn’t tell him I was smoking pot. I also didn’t tell him all the good things I did later to try and please him so there you go!

Smoking pot with friends resulted in - First time: felt kind of mellow and didn’t care about anything. Second time: again, mellow but wondered “what is the big deal?” and Third time: got some “pot” that had been laced with angel dust (or something!). I was dizzy, wobbly, saw weird lights and movement, could barely stand up and felt paranoid and completely out of control!!!

I came to 3 conclusions:

1) Drugs cost money (lots of money) and I don’t like the people you give the money to.

2) You don’t know what you are going to get, but for sure the people you are getting it from don’t care about you or your needs.

3) It is illegal and definitely not worth breaking the law over.

I never smoked pot again and never tried any other illegal drugs. All the people I know who took drugs when they were young feel ashamed of their past actions – none of them feel a sweet nostalgia for it like the movies show you. When I have mentioned such things to others (such as my children) it was to warn them away, not to give them permission to be as stupid as I was. Drugs truly can kill!!!

What I didn’t think about then and certainly should have is how the Lord would feel about my taking drugs. I can get a pretty good clue of what things he does not appreciate me putting into my body from those laws he has specifically stated. Now, what the Lord wants would be my first concern. 1 Cor. 3:16-17 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.