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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quehubo who wrote (126389)	12/4/2009 11:32:40 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542043

I suspect every person on this board has a family member seriously damaged because of drug abuse. Not here.

To: quehubo who wrote (126389)	12/5/2009 12:08:15 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542043

My dad was. He came back from WWII a raging alcoholic- and he screamed in his sleep, dealing with his PTSD by tamping it down with alcohol so he could fall asleep drunk. I don't see why my dad would have had PTSD, and thus have needed to self medicate, if he hadn't been through Guadalcanal and had his friends blown up all over him, or seen them die rather horribly in the war. (and he did actually have a friend literally blown up and land on him- well, pieces of the friend landed on him...)

To: quehubo who wrote (126389)	12/5/2009 4:44:03 PM
From: Paul Kern	Respond to of 542043

I suspect every person on this board has a family member seriously damaged because of drug abuse. Sorry, none in my family -- veterans included.

To: quehubo who wrote (126389)	12/5/2009 5:20:37 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542043

Your question got me thinking- why did you think everyone here would have a family member damaged by drug abuse? Obviously you have had experience with this damage, and so you project your experience on to the world. But it got me thinking- how common is true drug damage? So I went looking for statistics. You want a real scientific scandal? Start trying to get some real numbers on the drug problem in America. I don't mean the "problem" as law enforcement see it (It's huge! It's a cash cow) or the problem as legislators see it (It's huge- it's a bread and butter issue with older voters who eat this up)- nor can you trust the media- which follows an "If it bleeds it leads" strategy- so a meth head drowning a baby could go nationwide, even if that only happens once. So where do we get the stats? Judging from this thread, your perception is out of tune with reality- but after trying to find some real numbers on the net, I begin to worry there are none. Everyone seems to have an axe to grind and grind hard in these studies. I think with areas where emotions run high it begins to be tough to get good data- whether it's drugs, or terrorism, or anthropogenic climate change. You can't really believe either of the extremes, which leads you to plow around in the middle trying to ignore the screamers on the edges- but that's tough.