I work very hard at a job that does not pay enough money in order to pursue a dream. The dream is to be a successful playwright. A successful playwright brings home thought and imagination to the viewer or reader for the purpose of entertainment.
In this world, everyone has an opinion about how we as a country managed to get into the financial and social mess we see playing out on the news everyday. Everyday the world looks bleaker then the day before. The politicians postulate, the lawmakers are in closed sessions for our sake, and more people are out of work then anytime in recent history. Under all the hype, and hidden away from most Americans, is an under current, a cesspool of mistreatment and abuse, that continues unabated in the name of bettering our society.
Our country is inundated with drugs, and our jails are ruining thousands of lives in the name of freedom. We are in a war that is tearing the fabric of our families and our society’s development asunder. If the foundation of a house is rotten, the house is in danger of collapse. Our society is the greatest society in the world. As a nation, we put more people in jail then any other free world country in the world. The incongruity is glaring yet, like the elephant in the room, we choose not to see, a choice that passes our responsibilities on to the next generation. If one legacy holds true for the baby boomers, which they have carefully orchestrated out of the history books, is we [baby boomers] are the dropout generation. The generation that railed against responsibility and we do still not own our part, our responsibility to the next generation.
My point is we are no longer the country the rest of the world looks up to, rather our social mistreatment has become legendary in the rest of the world and the complacency of the American people has allowed the few who believe they are morally superior make laws for the many.
The war on drugs is a legitimate undertaking. The current method of fighting the war on drugs is misguided. The current method is a war on our on citizens, more importantly it is a war on our own children. The children who will one day be asked to takeover the responsibilities of this country are being decimated on two fronts. The first is drug use and the second is our society’s answer of incarceration, for what may only be poor judgment of youth.
Enough is enough and the time has come to see the elephant in the room and discuss its presence. Preventative education about drug use needs to be properly funded. Rehabilitation needs to be funded for extended periods of time; both in-patient and out-patient treatment programs need to be not dependent on insurance monies for our drug addicts and our alcoholics length, and quality of recovery opportunities. All of these are viable options that are far less expensive then our current heavy handed military and police options, with lengthy prison sentences incongruent with the crime and inconsistent in sentencing from one part of the country to another. Do the math, and then figure the value of saving one human life from a world of pain an institutions, graduating from a nonviolent offender, to a person by association becoming a violent offender, in order to survive our war on drugs.