Legalize It?

In a classic Simpsons episode, the town is overrun by pigeons. Bart's lizards loved pidgins and thrived and multiplied. Now the city was infested with lizards. The solution was to have snakes eat the lizards, than have gorillas eat the snakes when there was too many of those. When the town was overrun by gorillas, it was hoped that the winter would kill them off.

Now that sounds downright silly doesn't it. Not for author Michael Chettleburgh. He has proposed an odd solution to solve North America's problem of urban street gangs, legalize street drugs. Ah the talk of left wing idealists. It would be nice if things worked like that, but they don't. In order to solve one problem, Chettleburgh is creating another. Two wrongs don't make a right, and giving addicts more open access to the drugs they crave. Sure, it might get rid of the street gangs, and I stress might. However, it does not solve the equally serious problem of addiction in our society, which is considered to be a serious mental health disorder.

The ideal way to stop drugs is to kill the market, not by legalizing but be hitting drug operations in Canada hard and tightening our border with the US to prevent drugs from being smuggled into Canada. Furthermore, we desperately need to increase funding to addiction treatment centers. Apparently the waits for these facilities can be weeks or months depending on the location. The current system is a disgrace.