A surgeon’s plan for legalized drugs
Dr. Joseph Foreman’s plan is a little more hard line than ours, but the same principles can be applied to marijuana legalization.
“You have to control the suppliers. Once you take their profits away, they dry up. This is how we keep young people from getting hooked,” he said.
Foreman, 79, lives in Churchville and spent 40 years as a surgeon, part of it as chief of surgery at Warminster General Hospital in the 1980s.
Over that time, he treated surgical patients who, incidentally, were dope addicts.
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His solution is to launch government-run clinics where registered addicts would go to snort and shoot up. (He doesn’t include marijuana, which to him is not a “hard” drug.)
“If my plan works, there will be no more money for suppliers because the hardcore users will be getting [drugs] for free,” he said.
He’s talking about hard drugs like cocaine and heroin, but it is applicable to pot as well. The war on drugs creates marijuana prices that are artificially high- the harder laws get, the stricter punishments grow, the higher the price becomes. In this scenario, no matter how many dealers you put behind bars, no matter how many users you punish, there’s always somebody willing to take their place because the pay off makes the risk worth it. Until the drug war ends, America will have a drug problem.