When trump was elected his supporters believed he would MAGA -- make us great again. He thinks he's doing fine. I don't know what his supporters think. Few even talk to them. But the country is reeling now and it is being hit from all sides. There is Trump practically ordaining a two-front war with North Korea and Iran. Forget about non-intervention. And there is Trump and the GOP and most of the rest of us refusing to see the drug crisis for what it is -- national doom in a nutshell.

We don't need to just decriminalize drugs, we need to legalize them and cut the ground from under the false and destructive logic of the so-called war on drugs.

The opioids sign

We think in signs according to Charles Sanders Peirce, our neglected primary philosopher. When the word opioids comes up, we image a gruesome overdose death that we do not want to witness. Well, there will be a lot more if the following story is any indication.

This will hurt families and perpetuate crime and fill jails and otherwise be the wrong direction for a nation that has been wrong about drugs from the very beginning.

Just get smart

Opioids, heroin you name it. This is century 21. We should be coasting toward reasonability and fellow-feeling. Instead, we make wars dawn to dusk and have nightmares when sleeping.

The most disastrous and longest war we have lost is not Afghanistan but drugs. The wisest answer to drugs is to make them available under laws that serve the public interest. The same is true of crimes like prostitution.

We should legalize most things and control use. By criminalizing we create a crime-based legal system that colludes with criminality to profit all concerned.

The victims are the general public and the actual kids who lie in morgues in every state of the union. If you think this is unreasonable, google around and you will find wiser heads who have understood that the reason crime pays is that the so-called innocent profit as well.

The ruination of the future

It is very sad when we can predict not MAGA but the very reverse.

We are making America worse on a daily basis. Trump bears blame because he combines utter carelessness with an inflated ego that refuses to see you cannot wing it 24/7 and be a decent President. You need some values and commitments. These are two commodities that Trump conspicuously lacks.

But the destruction of the future also calls on the GOP noted in the dispatch above and on ourselves. Legalization is a forgotten word in public discourse. Decriminalization does not sit well with the current swamp. We are so far from being correct on drugs that it is really a cause for tears.
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