I would like to thank Jared Strong for his insightful and thought-provoking Dec. 2 column, “Methamphetamine can ruin lives.” With a majority of the media spending its time on things such as clown-men that like to sleep with little boys and the shocking revelation that superstar athletes cheat on their wives, it was refreshing to read commentary on a serious subject that impacts millions of American families.

The issues Jared raised about methamphetamine abuse are applicable to the drug problem in this country as a whole. Unfortunately, this problem begins not at the onset of addiction or even the first use of a substance, but in grade school where well-meaning but hopelessly flawed programs such as Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) offer completely unrealistic and misleading perspectives on the drug culture.

These programs seek to prevent first-time drug use by stigmatizing drugs as morally wrong. They try, as with most programs with a conservative slant, to create as much of a “black and white” scenario as possible, branding drug users as plain “bad people” while praising those who “Just say no.” As Jared points out, once the inevitable experiment with gateway drugs takes place (usually alcohol or marijuana), they find out that they have essentially been lied to by the establishment, and may go on to try other, more powerful drugs.

Instead of engaging in useless moralizing, educational programs should offer the truth about drugs. What drugs really are are profound examples of cost/benefit analysis. The less powerful drugs (such as acetaminophen) provide small gains at very low risk, while the drugs that provide the more potent and pleasurable effects to the brain (like meth) are associated with higher rates of addiction, health problems and emotional damage.

The thousands of social and moral concerns are merely byproducts of this elementary reason why people use drugs — they want to feel good. By viewing drug use in this way, perhaps we could stop persecuting people who commit victimless crimes and one day even learn to accept that substance abuse is simply a matter of personal choice.

Femi Oyekan

Senior

Management Information Systems