The role drugs has taken in our society never ceases to amaze me. These days you can always count on some insecure human beings to attack someone anytime they feel their own little corner of the universe is threatened.

I am, of course, referring to the piece by Robert Zeis, titled “Losing the War on Drugs to Bureaucracy.” In his column, Mr. Zeis advocates practicing the same panicky legislation, and regulation, that has yet to yield any results or deter any drug use.

The fault does not lie in Mr. Zeis’ intentions; the want to rid the United States of drug sellers, or more importantly, the violence and degradation hard-core drugs can bring, is a noble one. The problem with Mr. Zeis lies in his definitions.

The first thing I must take exception with is Mr. Zeis’ call to prosecute the users. Mr. Zeis writes, “society has ingrained us with the concept of the drug addict not as criminal but as victim.” I fear for a world that considers an individual who is addicted to any chemical substance a criminal.

For many individuals, there is a very real pain that accompanies the banality of existence. From day to day, people are forced to cope with poverty, homelessness and lack of opportunity with the knowledge that that they will never see anything better. A 24-hour stint in any of America’s roughest neighborhoods will provide all the explanation anyone would need for drug use. Life can be hard; everyone knows this. It is when life is only hard that people begin to search for sedation. Something that will help them forget their troubles. Something that will make them feel better. People who turn to drugs do not do it out of some disregard for the law. They do it to escape their surroundings.

Mr. Zeis then goes on to write, “we need to accept that marijuana is an illegal drug and should never be legalized, though it’s not addictive, it will ruin your life if you use it.” To assert that marijuana smoking will ruin one’s life is a little off the deep end. In Amsterdam, citizens smoke pot legally, and their country is still standing. The citizens of Amsterdam have yet to sell their country for a dime bag, and I don’t think they off each other for the privilege of sitting in a hash bar.

Alcohol provides many individuals with the same high, or sedation, that marijuana does. They are both drugs; the only difference is that one of them is legal. The very arbitrary laws that make marijuana illegal deter many individuals who would otherwise smoke marijuana if not for the illicit nature of it being a crime. Anyone who has a beer is doing the same thing as someone who smokes a joint. The difference is no one fears a can of beer.

Finally, we must define what a drug is. If the true nature of a social drug is to alleviate stress, or enhance a euphoric feeling, then we must certainly continue to include alcohol in the list of drugs. Which means most of us use drugs at some point in our lives. In his call for a more effective war, Mr. Zeis has forgotten that the same war was fought on alcohol and lost. It was the illicit nature of alcohol, and its lack of availability, that created crime during prohibition.

Legalizing marijuana use and regulating it in the same manner alcohol is regulated will remove the demand that a drug dealer meets. Nobody sells gin out of a basement anymore because it’s available at Hy-Vee and the Keg Shop. Making marijuana readily available to those who desire to use it will not reduce the members of our society to a bunch of pot-smoking criminals.

It is also important to eliminate a few misconceptions that Mr. Zeis seems intent on furthering, mainly those involving the portrait of a drug user. Contrary to what Mr. Zeis would have us believe, marijuana users do not occupy one corner of the world, where the hookers and gang bangers are born. Painting marijuana users as criminals, and making them outcasts different from you or I, is only a scare tactic, designed to lessen the humanity of people who just want happiness, or less pain, like the rest of us. The only difference between a guy who smokes a joint and a guy who goes to Tazzles and gets drunk enough to throw up on himself is the drug of choice.

A lot of people do drugs, and it is far more important to understand why they practice such behavior than it is to arrest them. A cure should be the goal of our society, rather than punishment. Mr. Zeis says he would “rather see these people off the streets anyway.” I wonder of Mr. Zeis knows “these” people include the guy he sits next to in class and the girl he may see out at the bar. I’m also curious if Mr. Zeis felt so strongly about drugs, and the crimes they bring, before the problem moved to his neighborhood.

Drugs are a social product of the world we live in. Individuals get high in many ways for many reasons. To punish those who use drugs with incarceration is to forget the very reason for their use. Humanity dictates that we, as a society, treat those who use drugs with compassion. To not do so is to further an arbitrary decision that states one drug is better than another.

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Zuri Jerdon is a senior in English from Cincinnati, Ohio.