Is the sky really falling?

I, like everyone else, am a little (mildly put) overrun on the subject of how bad things are.  If this is the foreplay that we, the public, need before we are willing to devalue our dollars and give huge bailouts to companies that none of us ever like anyway, then I say... ENOUGH!  Give them their money, because I know that they are going to get it anyway and let's get on with something more exciting and inspiring in our daily dialog than how the bad guys have gotten all the dough and they even get more when they least deserve any.  

As a professional, I was raised on "drug war" propaganda.  I was one of 50 state directors of substance abuse during Reagan's examination of the drug problem in American and the subsequent "answers" to the drug problem.  It started by enlisting consensus building around the US of the dire consequences of drugs on society and, in particular, in the work place.  From these "consensus" building conferences, called the White House Conferences on Substance Abuse, that were held in five different regions of the US and collimated in the final conference in DC; we learned that we had to spend millions more on the drug problem, we had to enact more laws to punish users and pushers and we had to protect our greatest resources... the children.  ( I am always cynical when I hear that the US likes to claim that children are our greatest natural resources... When I think of the US and natural resources, I think of strip mining and not investment in our children.)

I sat at the final conference and heard neoconservatives pushing for life-sentences for drug users and the death penalty for pushers.  I knew that wouldn't happen, but the spirit of anger and revenge was fueling a blazing furnace of future spending.  

Many of my colleagues were excited about the new interest of the government in addiction and felt that they would finally get the opportunity really help their fellow addicted citizens.  

Today we have 90% of all of the treatment centers in the US having outcomes of under 20% and I am being very generous since most centers will say that one-in-ten will get well, and the reality is even less.  We have the highest incarceration rates of any industrialized country and 80% of those in our prisons are being punished for drug-related offenses.  

Most people are in apathy about doing anything related to drug prevention and even less believe "once-an-addict, always and addict", so there is little support of treatment.  Here we are, 20+ years later and things are no better than they were when Nancy Reagan told us to "just say no".  (if you want to lear more about addiction and treatment, go to www.rehab-drug.net or www.drug-rehab-colorado.com.)

I really didn't want my log to be another depressing missive on how society can't win, but I do want to draw attention to the facts about what happens when we depend on the government to "bail us out".  I hope along with every other sane citizen, that we will all prosper again and that through this process we will become a more mature society that will invet in our futures by supporting sustainable industries and ending our dependence on companies and activities that will hurt us at the end of the day.  We need to be watchful of what outcomes we are getting from all of this future money that we are spending on systems that none of us understand. (Do we really understand what ASI does, other than gives huge bonuses to the least deserving? Do we really understand why Citi Bank needs such a huge piece of the pie while other banks are left to fold?)

During the "drug war" I was faced with the same vagueness and lack of knowingness about where we were going and what the money was actually going to produce.   This should all make sense and we shouldn't be overly involved in witch hunts for the bad guys, but we should be putting our efforts in creating a new vision of America that will bring the best of its past together with the lessons learned from over-consumption.  What piece of the pie is going to change the greedy culture of Wall Street and start focusing on taking care of the spirit of our country.  

I fear that we will go back to business as usual except that we will have a huge debt to confront and we won't be able to be the leader in the world that can continue to support the "American Way".  

We didn't even scratch the surface of what we could have done with the $15 Trillion spent on the drug war in the last 20 years.  

Be aware that when it comes to Washington and big government campaigns, things are never as they seem.  The truth of the motives and objectives of these campaigns is usually well hidden.  I hope that the new Administration isn't doing business as usual... Let's not allow that to be!