Controversy Over Legalization of Drugs in America

Midge Decter tells us that drugs destroy their habitual users morally, physically, and socially, and destroy their loved ones as well. She then tells us that drugs are taken in pursuit of the “siren call of instant ecstasy” and speaks of the “suffering of renunciation.” My, but she has a strange idea of what feels good. And here I always thought that self-destruction was a rather painful process! She must think that walking about in a perpetual haze in order to bring oneself to the brink of death feels terrific. It is not that users do not know the consequences of their actions; they have plenty of examples all around them.

The drug problem will never be solved as long as we frame the over-usage of dangerous chemicals as a selfish act. It is anything but. One cannot cause drugs’ pain or humiliation. The “drug abuser” is in actuality a self-abuser.

DAVID M. ALLEN, M.D.

Burbank