DRUGS: Time to nationalize them

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” — Ben Franklin

Say someone drives off the road and over the cliff. The reasonable civic response would be to put up guardrails and lower speed limits.  

It would be publicly impertinent for government officials to do the following:

Declare we have a cliff crisis!

Sue the car company…

Get a raise for using the public sector as charity for unregulated cliff clean up donations. Raise taxes, lower property values, etc.

Noticed how well paid-representatives have declared one crisis after another? Spokane’s mayor declared another opiate crisis.

Yet 15 miles away across an imaginary border (where all drugs have been strictly outlawed and housing prices still climb), a smiling federal prosecutor informs us a 40,000 pill bust is minimum for his pay grade.

In my opinion, as long as opiates can produce the kind of money that keeps this pill mill in production, we’ll all just keep grinning and bearing it. Please quit believing we will stop trying to cure cancer because there’s no money in it.

Nationalize drugs the same way we’ve handled any real crisis in the past. Regulate production to delivery using homeland security resources. Use the profits to further our goals for socialized medicine, including rehabs and price caps. “Border crisis” solved. “Homeless epidemics” cured. Safe access.

Maybe with the laser-like focus the media has on the subject, we won’t need a white house candyman or a gofundme for the next down and out reality star.

STEVEN REYNALDS

Coeur d’Alene