Fryowa
Administrator
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.The key is decreasing demand through education and treatment.
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.