T
The420Guy
Guest
Last week the police busted Noelle Bush, the 24-year-old daughter of
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for allegedly forging a prescription for the
anti-anxiety drug Xanax. The offense is a felony punishable by up to five
years in prison. Gov. Bush, realizing that punishment alone would be of
little help, paid $1,000 to bail out his daughter and probably will send
her back to one of the treatment centers she reportedly has been in before.
That's good. And what's good for a famous parent's daughter should be good
for America. In fact, the nation's $20-billion-a-year war against drugs
might stand a chance if the governor's brother, President Bush, would urge
Congress to correct the imbalance in anti-drug funding, which directs only
four cents of every dollar to prevention and treatment. The remaining 96
cents go to what former Health secretary Joseph Califano Jr., now a drug
abuse expert at Columbia University, calls "shoveling up the wreckage of
substance abuse and addiction in hospitals, welfare agencies, foster care
programs and prisons."
President Bush - whose daughters Jenna and Barbara both have been charged
with underage drinking and who himself was arrested in 1976 for driving
while intoxicated - has impressed Califano and other drug policy experts.
Bush recognizes, as he put it in one Rose Garden speech, that "the most
effective way to reduce the supply of drugs in America is to reduce the
demand for drugs in America."
Oddly, though, the president's newly appointed drug czar, John Walters, has
historically favored punishment over treatment. Last year, he called the
notion that drug sentences are too long one of "the great urban myths of
our time." Fact is, heroin and cocaine are cheaper than ever, the annual
number of heroin overdoses has doubled since the early 1990s and the
percentage of teenagers admitting to having been drunk at some time is rising.
The United States may be winning battles abroad, but it's losing the
domestic war on drug abuse and the backward thinking of key strategists
such as Walters is one reason why.
Bush and Congress need to correct the imbalances that result in so little
federal money for treatment. Legislators should also reverse an outrageous
law passed in 1998 that bars federal drug czars from spending even a penny
on ads that mention the most commonly abused drug of all, alcohol. Even as
alcohol was killing 6.5 times more young Americans than all illicit drugs
combined.
Adults today send a strange mix of messages to kids, permitting seductive
TV advertising, for instance, that promotes the virtues of mood-altering
prescription drugs like Xanax, Ritalin and Prozac, while funding
school-based seminars in which police officers tell students to "just say
no to drugs." And if impressionable youths end up turning to the wrong
drugs, we lock them up. This must be confusing for young Americans -
Noelle, Jenna and Barbara included.
Newshawk: Sledhead
Pubdate: Wed, 06 Feb 2002
Source: Concord Monitor (NH)
Copyright: 2002 Monitor Publishing Company
Contact: letters@cmonitor.com
Website: https://www.cmonitor.com/
Details: MapInc
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for allegedly forging a prescription for the
anti-anxiety drug Xanax. The offense is a felony punishable by up to five
years in prison. Gov. Bush, realizing that punishment alone would be of
little help, paid $1,000 to bail out his daughter and probably will send
her back to one of the treatment centers she reportedly has been in before.
That's good. And what's good for a famous parent's daughter should be good
for America. In fact, the nation's $20-billion-a-year war against drugs
might stand a chance if the governor's brother, President Bush, would urge
Congress to correct the imbalance in anti-drug funding, which directs only
four cents of every dollar to prevention and treatment. The remaining 96
cents go to what former Health secretary Joseph Califano Jr., now a drug
abuse expert at Columbia University, calls "shoveling up the wreckage of
substance abuse and addiction in hospitals, welfare agencies, foster care
programs and prisons."
President Bush - whose daughters Jenna and Barbara both have been charged
with underage drinking and who himself was arrested in 1976 for driving
while intoxicated - has impressed Califano and other drug policy experts.
Bush recognizes, as he put it in one Rose Garden speech, that "the most
effective way to reduce the supply of drugs in America is to reduce the
demand for drugs in America."
Oddly, though, the president's newly appointed drug czar, John Walters, has
historically favored punishment over treatment. Last year, he called the
notion that drug sentences are too long one of "the great urban myths of
our time." Fact is, heroin and cocaine are cheaper than ever, the annual
number of heroin overdoses has doubled since the early 1990s and the
percentage of teenagers admitting to having been drunk at some time is rising.
The United States may be winning battles abroad, but it's losing the
domestic war on drug abuse and the backward thinking of key strategists
such as Walters is one reason why.
Bush and Congress need to correct the imbalances that result in so little
federal money for treatment. Legislators should also reverse an outrageous
law passed in 1998 that bars federal drug czars from spending even a penny
on ads that mention the most commonly abused drug of all, alcohol. Even as
alcohol was killing 6.5 times more young Americans than all illicit drugs
combined.
Adults today send a strange mix of messages to kids, permitting seductive
TV advertising, for instance, that promotes the virtues of mood-altering
prescription drugs like Xanax, Ritalin and Prozac, while funding
school-based seminars in which police officers tell students to "just say
no to drugs." And if impressionable youths end up turning to the wrong
drugs, we lock them up. This must be confusing for young Americans -
Noelle, Jenna and Barbara included.
Newshawk: Sledhead
Pubdate: Wed, 06 Feb 2002
Source: Concord Monitor (NH)
Copyright: 2002 Monitor Publishing Company
Contact: letters@cmonitor.com
Website: https://www.cmonitor.com/
Details: MapInc
