Some Drugs Should Stay Illegal

Drug Week, Part 3

Crack is really bad. Cocaine makes people act crazy and dangerous to others. Meth destroys you. The stimulants, in general, seem to have really bad consequences for the people who take them and to those around them.

I take a stimulant every day, as do most Americans, in my morning coffee. Caffeine is a mild stimulant when taken in organic doses - the amount in a handful of coffee beans, for example. I expect that if I snorted purified caffeine, bad things would happen. The same is true of the other stimulants. South American Indians have been chewing coca leaves for ages. East Africans chew a leaf called khat, with similar stimulant effects. In organic doses, stimulants can be helpful.

Chemistry makes it possible to extract the purified stimulant and take it in unnatural and dangerous doses. They are also hugely addictive. And the chemical stimulants, like meth, are scary in the effects of their high and in how quickly they destroy addicts.