Reagan’s Fight Against Drugs
The campaign by the President and Mrs. Reagan to teach young people to say “No!” to drugs and become a drug-free generation has been doomed to failure from the very start. The reason? Virtually no attention is being paid by them, or anybody else for that matter, to our No. 1 drug problem.
The problem is alcohol. It is time to stop pretending that alcohol is not a drug, or that it doesn’t cause a drug problem. Alcohol is responsible for the deaths of 250,000 Americans a year, there are 10 million alcohol addicts nationwide. Its cost to our society is $100 billion a year. These figures exceed the toll taken by all illegal drugs combined.
Alcohol is the third leading cause of birth defects. Alcohol kills more people in a single day than cocaine did in all of 1985. Despite its legality, alcohol is the largest cause of drug-related crime, the majority of violent crime involves alcohol use. Consider how many families and lives are ruined daily, how many abused children suffer because of their parents’ alcohol habit.
If we are going to protect our children and teach them to shun drugs, why do we let athletes glamorize alcohol on TV, why do we permit its sale in grocery stores? How can we claim to be fighting a war on drugs when our deadliest intoxicant enjoys absolute amnesty? Let’s call it what it is, a killer drug, or admit we are hypocrites.
CAREY SUBLETTE
Riverside
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