Western Wisconsin's REAL Drug Problem

 In "State's border communities struggle with meth" (http://tinyurl.com/2a7hy5z), Steven Elbow uses biased sources to identify the nature and extent of the problem. He quotes stats on criminal prosecutions, burglaries, and time spent by drug task forces to paint methamphetamine as the worst drug in the state's western counties.

I rock-solid guarantee you that alcohol causes more property damage, domestic abuse, and ruined lives than meth. I rock-solid guarantee you that tobacco causes more health problems and premature deaths than meth.

So why do these drugs NOT show up in reports like this one? Because they're legal. Because people can use them freely and publicly without running afoul of "drug task forces". Because they're cheap — no vig for the cops, no bribes for the judges, no long string of crooked middlemen between producer and user, no protection or hush money, no financing of gang wars — just honest mark-ups by small business people competing in the free market.

Elbow's report is like climbing on a bus to conduct a survey on whether people ever ride the bus. If all you're looking for is illegal drug use, that's all you're going to find.

I'm not saying meth is the greatest thing since the Macintosh. It sounds awful, frankly, and I wouldn't want to use it myself and would certainly warn everybody else away from it as well.

But, as we should have learned during the original Prohibition (you know, the one we repealed because it INCREASED alcohol consumption, youth drinking, and criminal activity), there's no drug out there whose effects can't be made even worse by criminalizing it.

The REAL drug problem? Illegality! Legalize, regulate, license, and tax!

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Repeal Prohibition. Again. For all the same reasons.