http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/369995.html
ELISE PATKOTAK
Published: April 8th, 2008 11:17 PM
Every once in a while, I am forced to face the fact that the war on
drugs is an abject failure, yet lack of a spine in way too many
politicians has made a rational, national discussion of this issue
practically impossible. Which is just pathetically sad because the
billions of dollars and thousands of lives lost to this hopeless war
could have been much better spent in treating people with a problem,
to say nothing of how much we'd save if we emptied our jails of people
whose only crime was pot.
This issue comes to the forefront again in my life because of its
impact on the work I do with children. It is apparently OK under state
law to adopt children out to parents who drink so long as their
drinking is not a problem. So if they have a glass of wine with dinner
or a cocktail before a play, the state deems them acceptable adoptive
parents. But if a person smokes pot at all, even once, even away from
the child, the law considers them unsuitable and they are asked to get
substance abuse evaluations.
Considering that alcohol is a gazillion times more likely to be the
problem causing children to be removed from their homes, this simply
doesn't make sense. It makes even less sense when the assumption is
that anyone who smokes pot has a debilitating addiction but anyone who
drinks is considered healthy unless proven otherwise.
There are a lot of people in this state with a severe drinking
problem. Whether we like it or not, many of them overcome that
addiction by replacing it with pot. That might not be the ideal
solution, but as someone who has worked with abused kids for over
thirty years, if that's what it takes to make a home where kids are
safe, fed and allowed to sleep through the night without blood
spattering their bedding from Dad beating Mom, then I say give them
all the pot they want. Most people on pot do not get violent, rape
their children or forget to feed them. Maybe not the ideal situation,
but I've been around long enough to know that people rarely achieve
perfection.
I have been to more than one meeting on abused children where
participants go off to dinner after a full day of workshops and order
a cocktail or glass of wine to help them unwind from the day. They see
no irony in sipping that beverage while discussing the problems that
drug abuse causes in our state and nation. Yet alcohol is a drug,
albeit a legal one.
If we can so easily accept alcohol as a regulated drug acceptable for
adult use and only a problem when abused, why is it so hard to start a
real discussion about pot use? Seriously, when was the last time you
picked up the paper or watched the evening news and heard about
someone going nuts on just pot and committing a heinous crime? If an
honest discussion were ever allowed about pot in this country, we'd
all have to admit that one of the most violent drugs in our society is
the one that is legal -- alcohol.
I find it amusing that at this late stage in my life I am writing a
column in defense of pot. It feels like something I should have
written in the '60s. The truth is that in an ideal world, all parents
would raise their children in safe, sober homes where the strongest
substance used was caffeine. But Ozzie and Harriet don't exist anymore
and no home is ever really as perfect as the one they ****trayed.
So we go with the best possible homes we can create to raise our
children. In some cases, that's a home where parents might smoke pot.
In my experience with troubled families in this state, if forced to
choose, I find it highly preferable to alcohol. If we could have an
honest discussion about drug use in our society, alcohol would
probably end up banned and pot use would be legal.
=A9 Copyright 2008, The Anchorage Daily News, a subsidiary of The
McClatchy Company
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