The health of the people in our country

The key is decreasing demand through education and treatment.
I'd love for that to be true but it isn't. The education thing has been going on since the early 80s and it's just as bad now (or worse) than it was then.

Treatment only works if the person receiving it wants it. Unfortunately most addicts do not and don't have the willpower to maintain it. Relapse rates of drug and alcoholism are up towards 85-90%. It's biology...our brains are literally wired to make ourselves feel as much pleasure as possible. Treatment has also been around for generations and only works for a tiny portion of the target audience.

Take away the supply rather than the demand and you don't need treatment in the first place. We have the means to do that. There has never been a more powerful operational or logistical force in the entire history of the world than the US military. Going into Mexico to weed out cartel members and meth producing operations would take less than a generation. You just have to make the decision and commit. Would some innocent people get caught in the cross fire? I have no doubt. But would tens of millions of people not be in graves, rehabs, prisons, and homeless shelters if we did it? Also yes. That's a lesser evil in my opinion.

Radical Islamists and the like aren't killing millions of Americans and destroying the lives of tens of millions of Americans...meth and opiates are. It's time we start with the low-hanging fruit which are Mexican and Central American cartels.

I'm sorry, D.A.R.E. and rehab stuff hasn't worked on a large scale, and it isn't going to. There are people who benefit from treatment, but there are many, many more who don't. And those people who don't unfortunately have offspring who are almost certainly going to continue down those same paths to no fault of their own.

Telling kids not to take candy from strangers is a great idea to the insulated, wealthy idealists who've never been in the trenches of addiction or seen it in their families up close...really up close. You have to get rid of the stranger offering candy to the kids.
 
I have no idea how long I'll live, but my guess would be sub 70 years old. My dad's side is terrible, I don't know if I can think of a male who lived past 62. But all were overweight and smoked etc.

I'm not worried about it at all, you can only do what you can do and the rest is up to the roll of the dice.

But I do know that smoking is by far the most deadly thing that people commonly do to themselves that's preventable. More so than even shitty diets. Shitty diets are real, real bad, but smoking is worse.
Thats what I'm saying. If they were all overweight and smokers, hopefully that has nothing to do with your longevity.
 
Correct. I've never had a cigarette in my mouth but I effectively smoked every day from birth to 19 years old.
Clearly, you are controlling what you can control. I am betting you will live a lot longer than you predict. I certainly hope I am right.
 
The key is decreasing demand through education and treatment.
What makes you think that after 50 plus years of trying to educate people about drugs not working, and treatment being 85+% unsuccessful, that it’s going to work now? Honest question.

How many more generations of Americans have to die, end up in prison, lose their friends & family to drugs, and experience all the other societal effects too numerous to mention here while a bunch of "experts" in a cozy university somewhere who've never experienced the dark side of addiction try to come up with novel ideas about treatment and education?

Killing en masse the criminals hell bent on producing and bringing those drugs here will have an immediate effect. Destroying their facilities just like we have in the middle east will have an immediate impact. They know now there are absolutely no repercussions for what they’re doing. If they see enough of their cohorts turned to vapor by a force that has no equal and no restrictions on hunting them, they will think twice eventually. Will it be expensive and a massive undertaking? Absolutely. But think about the positive things that will come from it if meth isn't hauled across our southern border by the trailer load. Opiates--same thing. Chinese fentanyl isn't coming directly from China, it's coming through Mexico.

There will always be illegal things brought into this country. But if you don't think 99% of it is coming from cartel organizations in Mexico and Central America you have your head in the sand.

They are profiteering, terrorist murderers who deserve no quarter and no mercy. We have the intelligence capabilities and the resources to turn that country into Mars if need be to eradicate the disease. If we can use our intelligence to track and kill Islamic militants and facilities with precision, we can just as easily wipe out Mexican drug lords and their employees.

People need to get beyond only looking at this from the perspective of the "technicality" of whether or not we'd be "at war" with a country, or whether it's legal according to some other countries half a world away in Europe. There is a well-defined problem that has not been solvable through many, many decades of trying non-violent means. The murderers have left no other option than violent means in return, and they certainly are not afraid to use violence to reach their own goals.

It's time. It's been long enough and we have exhausted all other means.
 
I think educating on cigarettes has had a very positive impact. I don't know many young people who smoke compared to 20 years ago.
The problem is the same educational methods about narcotics have been used since the 70s and it's had no effect on that. It's actually gotten worse. We can't afford as a country to waste more time on it while people are still getting sucked into that black hole of narcotics. Do we spend 20 more years of scourge trying to figure out how to "educate" people that meth and opiates are bad, or do we go after the people producing it and bringing it here with the full force of our servicepeople?

Our military is constitutionally bound to protect our country from all enemies, foreign or domestic. Let them do it.
 
Unfortunately the younger generation has moved over to vaping, which can't be any better.
I agree that vaping is a bad deal and bad for your health, but so is a cheeseburger.

Vaping isn't killing millions of people, destroying families on a massive scale, or filling our prisons up with people who'd have led great, productive lives if they didn't have easy access to meth and pain pills from Mexico.

We pretty much eradicated meth production in the US with restrictions on Sudafed. But all of that didn't do a single thing to decrease its use. The production simply shifted to Mexico and Central America.
 
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