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Pastimes : Ask God -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (16744)	6/2/1998 9:13:00 PM
From: Grainne	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 39621

Ann, I'm sure you've already left, but I did want to answer your question about politics and Northern Ireland. I think Clinton's greatest accomplishment may turn out to be helping create peace there. It looks at the moment like his presidency is not going to be remembered very positively in a historical sense. You are right to say that America has always supported our ally, Great Britain. Reagan and Bush in particular were extremely biased towards the English position in the war over Northern Ireland. People pick presidents for many reasons. I think the Irish American vote is huge, since there are 40,000,000 of you here, but many of the Irish got very conservative along with the rest of the country in the early eighties, and supported Reagan just like you did. I do think we disagree about the drug problem. I agree that it is huge, but believe it has more to do with parents not rearing very healthy children, or spending enough time with them. I think there is a lot of peer pressure to do drugs among teenagers, but I also believe the children who get hooked on drugs have other serious problems of which their parents are not always aware. American teenagers also have way too much spending money, and not enough supervision. Having said all that, though, the effort to stop the drug trade has failed miserably. Less than 10% of drugs are ever intercepted. I personally think we would be better off decriminalizing them, and spending the money for treatment and public education instead of trying to keep them out. The reason I believe this is because the other way doesn't work. If it did, great, but we have given it thirty years of concentrated money and effort, and it has failed miserably. Since most property crime, and much of gang activity, is also tied to the drug trade, there really are a lot of reasons to try a more therapeutic approach. If our citizens did not demand drugs, there would not be such a huge market for them. If they were not immensely profitable, there would not be so many dealers. If we stopped the police state and offered high quality treatment options to everyone who came forward, I think a lot of people would avail themselves of it. In every society, there is going to be a small percentage of the population that is addicted. Certainly, criminalizing it has not solved the underlying problem. Drop by and say hi when you get back from your trip!!