Alcohol

"I never gargled, I never gambled, I never smoked at all. Until I met my two good amigos, Nick Teen and Al K. Hall." So goes the opening lyrics of an old Rolf Harris song. It's a humorous song, of course, but there is little that is truly humorous about alcohol for the approximately 14 million Americans who are alcohol abusers or alcoholics.

Alcohol is a true narcotic drug. It's use and abuse causes more harm, damage, disease, and death than all the presently illegal drugs combined.

We are fighting a multi-billion dollar war on other drugs, ones that cause less harm than legal alcohol. If the government has the legitimate power to save us from ourselves--to dictate what we can or cannot smoke, drink, inject, snort, or otherwise use in our own bodies--why then is the government not fighting a war on alcohol also?

Conversely, if it is legal for adults to use or abuse alcohol (where they do not violate the rights of others), then the presently illegal drugs should be legalized because their mere use is demonstrably less harmful than the use of alcohol.

Do your government representatives--local, state, or federal--preach for the continuation of the futile and wasteful war on drugs? Do they drink alcohol, the number one violence-causing drug? If so, then they are complete and absolute hypocrites and should be voted out of office. They are not tough on drugs. They are tough on the drugs that they don't like. Drugs that are less harmful, overall, than the drug they use.

It is a fact that nearly all of the violence associated with the presently illegal drugs is caused, not by the use of the drugs, but their illegal status. If you want to reduce drug-related violence, then they must be relegalized to consenting adults. After all, if a person truly owns the property of his or her body, then that person has a right to use his or her body anyway they wish just so long as they do not violated the rights of others. That's called inalienable rights.

In conclusion, it seems quite obvious, that alcohol should be considered drug enemy number one. Of course, we fought that war once, with disastrous results. Now, we are doing the same with other, less liked, drugs, but with no less disastrous results.