[Vision2020] Drunks, drugs, and the empathy factor

[Joan Opyr]

Dear Dave and other Visionaries:

About the Bush budget cuts -- it could be that I was thinking not of Mark Solomon's list but of a piece I read in some left-wing rag entitled: Bush Budget Kills Drug-Free Schools Program, Maintains Block Grant.  (Sorry, I didn't copy the URL, but I did print out the article, so it must have made quite an impression on me as I'm generally cheap with the toner.  The journal is called Fighting Back, so that should tell you something about its slant; you're free, if you like, to go ahead now and dismiss it.  I won't take offense.  Hell, I won't know, will I?)  My understanding of the matter, however, is that Bush's 2006 Budget calls for $441 million in funding for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools & Communities Program, a reduction, though not a draconian one; it calls for "level funding" of the nearly $2 billion-dollar Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment block grant program; and a $270 million decrease in funding for demand reduction programs.

To quote that damned liberal rag, Fighting Back:

"After years of sustained, stratospheric budget increases, funding for addiction research would come back to earth under Bush's 2006 plan.  The National Institute on Drug Abuse would get a modest $4- million dollar increase to its $1-billion budget, while the $438-million National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism would rise by just $2 million."  

Does this keep pace with inflation?  Does this keep pace with use?  Damned if I know.  I'd need to do a lot more research than I'm willing to do for the sake of fussing with you, Dave Budge.  (It's nothing personal; I have a neck-ache.  Poor ergonomics here at my computer desk.)  I will note however (and I will say a sarcastic hoorah!) that the Bush administration is expanding funding for the Access to Recovery program, which allows individuals to choose faith-based recovery programs like AA, I assume, only with even more God stuff.  Will this work?  Is it Constitutional?  Will this sort of rehab get you off of horse and onto the Pauline donkey?  Sorry -- I'm answering your questions with questions again.  I have a bad habit of doing that.  I think it's a Jewish trait; Jesus did it all the time.  Drove his followers crazy.

Now, Dave, you are quite right to point out that I do not have direct, first-hand, signed affidavit knowledge of George W. Bush's illegal drug use  I was way too young to get into the Texas version of Studio 54 back when Mr. Bush was in his twenties and thirties.  He's acknowledged that he abused alcohol until he was forty (though he has never admitted to being an alcoholic).  Others -- and who knows how reliable they are -- have attested to his use of other substances.  Mr. Doug Wead (what a great name) has come forward with tapes of then-Governor Bush talking implicitly, if not explicitly, about his marijuana use, and discussing his strategy for dealing with questions about other drugs that he may or may not have toked upon.  I suppose I could rely on Kitty Kelley . . . but then I would catch hell, wouldn't I?  The Bushes have neither sued her nor had her assassinated, so I guess that puts her credibility at about 50/50.  Nope -- I can never be 100% sure that Mr. Bush snorted coke.  I am forced to rely not, as you suggest, on Democratic imitators of The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, but on grotesque hearsay, stories put about by Mr. Bush's old friends and fraternity brothers, Larry Flynt's Penthouse, and the rumors regarding said drug use that have swirled about Texas for the past thirty years.  I have to rely on all of that and my own unverifiable-but-never-let-me-down-before experience and judgment at spotting a user.  That's what tells me that Mr. Bush was a snort-a-roosky.  He had the money, the connections, the time, and the inclination.  Dismiss that if you must, but I'm going with it.  Call it woman's intuition.  Or not.   

[BTW, if I were Jennifer McFarland, I'd pull the Presidential limo and search it with the sniffer dogs the very next time Mr. Bush drives through Moscow.  You can thank me for the tip later, Jennifer.  When 60 Minutes interviews you, you can plug my book!]

There.  That's it for me.  Mr. Bush's unproven use aside, Dave, are we or are we not in general accord on this issue?  Treatment and not incarceration.  Stop use with the user and not by bombing poppie fields in Afghanistan or coca leaf growers in Columbia?  Stop with the DEA and make with the funding for the REHAB.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.auntie-establishment.com

PS: If you're a glutton for punishment, Google "Bush Budget 2006" and "drug treatment" and you'll find five thousand sources, opinions, and commentary on what will happen re: treatment versus incarceration over the next four years.  If you're not a glutton for punishment, then please allow me to summarize: it's not good.Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
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