(Article submitted by volunteer writer: “Local Author”)

Admin Note: IdahoFallz.com has for some time has had a “no religious discussion” policy. It is a good policy to maintain. Let’s keep this the discussion away from religion and keep in on the legal accusations and police involvement – and what should and should not take place given the facts of this specific situation.

Many people have been following the daily news coverage of the Polygamist sect in San Angelo, Texas.

The premise of the situation is that an underage girl (16) called an abuse hotline saying she had been raped and beaten by her 50 year old husband. To date, however, they have not found or identified the girl claiming to have made the phone call, and there has been some speculation that it was made by someone outside the ranch.

Since then police have raided the compound removing 416 children from the ranch and have obtained custody of them. The news reported that several teenage girls were found pregnant.

Abuse should not be tolerated in any. However, at this stage in the game the alleged abuse appears to have come from a man (apparently not the girls father). There have been no reported cases of abuse from any mothers (that has been reported) and a situation like this can be traumatizing to a child alone, taking the children away from parents and placing them with strangers could have an even greater impact.

Based on the situation, should authorities be separating the children from their mothers and placing them into stranger’s homes or shelters? Should the authorities be more aggressive or more careful as they investigation the possible abuse?

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy reading: Should Authorities be Separating Mothers from their Children in the San Angelo Polygamist Community?, Three Steps to End Our War on Drugs, Grass Roots Libertarianism,

I am surprised nobody has yet written an article at IdahoFallz.com about America’s decades-old War on Drugs. I read many comments where site users express their desire to read and discuss the Drug War. I personally waited to write about it because people who bring up the topic tend to be quickly smeared as “another drug user” and their subsequent thoughts get dismissed. Hopefully I can still be taken seriously after publishing 419 other articles on a wide range of civic, government, and social issues.

I foresee that if America’s War on Drugs ever does end, it would happen in three steps or stages. The first step would be to legalize agricultural hemp production. The second step would be to legalize marijuana production, sale, and use. The third step would be to legalize all other drugs, including meth, cocaine, heroine, etc. Some will call these three steps a slippery slope, and I cannot fault that viewpoint. These three steps are clearly stages of an overall agenda, but the question is if you think the agenda is intended to weaken or improve America? Let’s discuss these steps one at a time, and when you comment please refer to what you think of each distinct step, or if you think there are other stages I’ve overlooked.

I think the first step America needs to take is decriminalizing hemp for agricultural purposes. Hemp is closely related but distinctly different from marijuana. You cannot get high from smoking hemp, but Congress has confused the issue and outlawed hemp. Why is legalizing hemp important for America? I think hemp is important because it brings us to the table of science, discussing and realizing there is a difference from marijuana, and that we can enjoy the benefits of one without endorsing the other. I’m sure many folks will discuss the virtues of hemp, but to start I encourage you to read the Wikipedia page about hemp.

I can foresee America easily waking up to the distinction between hemp and marijuana, and that first step would be an easy baby step for us. The second and third steps are the doozies, which would require a huge leap that I’m not sure America is capable of right now. The second step involves recognizing that marijuana is much more like alcohol than cocaine or meth. The third step involves deciding whether we want to spend money and energy on punishing drug use or treating drug use.

Regarding the second step, I’m just trying to kick start this discussion so I won’t go into all the details of marijuana, such as what’s supposed to be good or bad about it. I will encourage you to read the Wikipedia page on marijuana/cannabis, and I encourage folks to share their knowledge and experience with marijuana vs. alcohol in our society. What do you think?

The third step would certainly have to occur after the first two, because America must be willing to challenge the government’s propaganda about hemp and marijuana for the past decades. The third step is a much bigger leap of faith, and requires shifting our priorities. I don’t think we need to give up our values, or our principles for the third step to occur. I think our principles are that we want our folks to better themselves, and we all believe drugs get in the way. Our priorities to enforce these values, however, have been focused on prohibition, punishment, and penalizing users. We treat drug use as a criminal problem, and I think we can treat it more honestly and effectively as a medical and mental problem.

I was fortunate to visit Europe a couple times during high school. My brother and I once walked through a Frankfurt downtown park, and he pointed out the large group of drug users in a seating area. While we walked several hundred feet away from this area because my brother said the users could get sketchy, an ambulance came screaming onto the scene. The ambulance drove right into the middle of the drug user group and loaded up someone collapsed on the ground.

While we walked and looked over our shoulder at the ambulance, a young woman with a decimated body staggered up to us with a needle in her hand, crying and pleading to my brother in German. I did not understand what she said, but my brother was clearly alarmed and shouted at her “Nine, nine!” while he told me to pick up the pace. When we were away from her, he said she was begging him to hold her arm still so she could inject her drug syringe, that she was too shaky and had no strength to do it herself. I was fairly shocked because you do not usually see this kind of thing in Idaho’s public parks. I think that experience of seeing the effects of actual drug use had much more impact on me than any silly “Just Say No” or “D.A.R.E.” marketing campaign ever did. This experience has led me to believe that legalizing all drugs would have a better effect on discouraging drug use than what we currently do.

What do you think?

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy reading: Paper Checks Belong to a Bygone Era, Three Steps to End Our War on Drugs, Is Citizen Journalism Useful or Important?,