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The war on drugs is over. Drugs win.

If heroin and cocaine were legalized, would this counrty realize a new wave of addicts? If the United States government sponsored the sale of methamphetamine would rehabilitation centers and county jails experience an impossible demand? Would crack pipe sales bitch-slap the tobacco industry? No.

Endemic to the debate is the concern that an entire generation of addicts is patiently awaiting legalization. How many potential heroin addicts refuse the syringe simply because it is illegal? This concern is without merit considering that an addict, heroin or otherwise, will go to any lengths to acquire his drug of choice, including robbery and prostitution. This concern is further flawed because it assumes there is nothing unique about an addicted person. addiction is realized organically, not by legality. There is no such thing as a recreational crack user, tempted by the occasional family reunion. That is ludicrous.

Legalization will decimate the illegal drug trade (yes, I realize decimate means one in ten, I’m writing figuratively dammit). This in turn will establish an indefinite cash flow for rehabilitation, education and community outreach. This country has been reacting to the drug problem in a cowboy fashion for too long. Solutions exist not from top to bottom, but rather within local communities nationwide.

I realize this is a sweeping condemnation of our country’s failed efforts to maintain even a sliver of sanity during a tireless crusade. Much debate is needed.

What is it about a pornographic image that so irks the sensibilities of the Christian right? Is it that porn leads to the inequality of women? Is it concerned with violence and/or discrimination? Perpetuating equality and admonishing violence and discrimination are seemingly unanimous aims, however I wonder if the right hasn’t found a convenient rationale to shadow its otherwise stifling agenda.

The right has fought hard to eradicate the empowerment of women for years, namely by denouncing both sex education and birth control. With regard to porn, however, the right seems justified in assuming the posture of equal rights crusader. Adding fuel to an already strange brew, feminist groups do not seem irked by this position. The two storm the San Fernando Valley hand-in-hand, screaming censorship in concert. Is this the type of armageddon Robertson and Falwell envisioned? Cats and dogs living in harmony, consciously tabling the chase?

Or is this perhaps a more enlightened sect of rightists? Can one be consumed with the disparities of inequality yet all the while pray for the death of modernism? Surely not. While the feminists rail against discriminatory images, the right has discovered a window to better articulate its seedier campaign: namely the abolition of education.

Under the guise of equality the right has every intention of censoring not only the Larry Flynts of the world, but further, any and all information concerning AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, sexual identification, abortion and contraception. Beneath any whisper of progressive thought looms an already established disdain for self-empowerment. Give them an inch and they will take your soul.