National Insanity, by Mike Kerner

Exclusive to TLE

Does it seem to anyone else that we have become insane as a nation. The lunatics seem to be in charge of the asylum. Major policy decisions are being made without the slightest relationship to logical thought. Solutions are proposed to problems that can not possibly have a positive effect or will actually make things worse. Examples abound.

We desperately need widespread public access to guns to protect ourselves from the diffuse threat of terrorism. Kansas and Missouri are among the few states left that do not permit concealed carry. In the discussions in the legislature and newspaper editorials, opponents still use the argument that our state might become a shooting gallery if concealed carry is approved. Thirty-two states already have "must- issue" concealed carry and the only consequence was a reduction in crime. How can anyone still use this same old nonsensical argument?

Guns are used defensively more than two million times per year in the United States to stop criminal activity, usually without any shots being fired. Merely brandishing a firearm sets the criminal to flight. What type of maniac would seek to ban guns and help criminals complete those two million criminal attempts each year?

Commercial pilots have expressed a desire to carry guns on board their planes to protect themselves and their passengers. Politicians have objected to arming pilots of commercial aircraft. After all, something terrible might happen if they used a gun to protect the plane from hijackers. I guess that it is much better for the Air Force to shoot the plane out of the sky!

There have been serious discussions of a national ID card as a defense against terrorism. How will ID cards prevent another terrorist attack in any way? It is obvious that the terrorists can buy any ID they might need, but the talk continues and will probably come to fruition. We will have all the trappings of a police state with no benefits.

The government has been spending a fortune on advertisements to tell us that drug use supplies funds for terrorists. Do you think that those ads will convince anyone to stop using drugs when 30 years of the War on Drugs has not? The only way to cut off that money is to end the War on Drugs. It is pointless and has failed to reduce drug use for decades and now we have one more good reason to end it.

For thirty years, we have been putting people in jail for use and/or possession of selected substances. It never stopped or even slowed usage but it sure made many people miserable and many evil people rich.

There is absolute proof that marijuana is medically useful, even to the point of life and death in some situations, but our congressional drug warriors keep acting as if it is the devil incarnate. Mandatory minimum sentences make marijuana sale a more serious crime than murder and routinely punish the least involved defendant more severely than the most involved.

Based on recently released information from the Nixon tapes, we now know that a presidential commission decided that Marijuana was essentially harmless and recommended legalization in 1972(1). That report, like others that came up with politically incorrect conclusions, fell into the memory hole. When the report was released, President Nixon decided to activate the War on Drugs, rather than act on the recommendations of the report, and hundreds of thousands of innocent people have gone to jail for nothing each year since then.

The Institute of Medicine was commissioned by then Drug Czar Barry MCCaffrey in 1997 to review the medical literature and confirm that Marijuana had no medical uses. In March of 1999(2) they issued their report and said otherwise. They found that there were, in fact, several medical uses for Marijuana and decided that its side effects were well in line with other drugs used regularly. This report also fell into the memory hole.

On February 12 the day that the whole country was on high alert for a terror attack, the only terrorists active were people who got government paychecks. The DEA raided several medical marijuana dispensaries in San Francisco, bravely protecting us from the sick people who were using marijuana to live with their illness. We wouldn't want to send the wrong message, would we?

In the name of the War on Drugs the government has shot private planes (operated by missionaries) out of the sky, killing a mother and her baby. They have imprisoned doctors who wrote too many pain killer prescriptions (4). As a result, pain is under-treated by doctors all over this nation. They fear the disastrous attention of the DEA. So what if people in agony don't get enough pain killer. We wouldn't want to send the wrong message, would we?

The War on Drugs is totally insane and totally evil!

Zero tolerance laws and policies are the result of the two insane Wars (drugs and guns). Because of them little kids get suspended from school for terrorist acts when they go "bang, bang" with their fingers or draw pictures of guns. Asthmatic children cannot carry their emergency inhalers with them in school and risk death while someone goes to find the school nurse during an asthma attack. Deaths have already occurred.(3) No matter, we wouldn't want to send the wrong message, would we?

______
References:

1. National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, "Marihuana: A Signal of Misunderstanding; First Report, Washington, DC, U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1972

2. Institute of Medicine, March 1999 http://bob.nap.edu/books/0309071550/html/

3. Reason Magazine, April 2002, "Asthma Attack, When Zero Tolerance Collides with Children's Health."

4. This really happens. My wife was a patient of just such a doctor. She is currently serving a 15 year sentence for caring about her patients.

T
H
E

L
I
B
E
R
T
A
R
I
A
N

E
N
T
E
R
P
R
I
S
E