Military Tactics No Use Against Drugs

Wrote this a few weeks ago and it was published in today's Montgomery Advertiser. This version is slightly edited from the one I sent in.

Letters
Military tactics no use against drugs

I read with dismay and disgust the story "Iraq vet uses military tactics to fight drugs." This approach is wrong on so many levels.

There is no sane, logical explanation for ever placing an Iraq war veteran, who might have a real bad case of PTSD, in charge of provocative, rebellious, adolescent children. That is just asking for trouble.

I am used to soldiers coming out of combat and being hired as drug SWAT team officers, which is a horrible idea, but placing them in schools? That has to be the worst idea ever.

How long until Principal G.I. Joe has a flashback and decides to engage in hand-to-hand combat with a student over a Tylenol?

You can get over an addiction, but you can never get over a conviction. It teaches kids to depend on the government to fix a problem that isn't the government's business to begin with. Drug use is a private family matter, a health and social issue and should be treated as such.

Drugs are not living things, cannot fight back and therefore cannot have a war waged against them. It's a war on American citizens, a war on American children. By all accounts the drug war has been an abject failure, as drugs are cheap, of high quality and plentiful to anyone who wants them.

Loretta Nall
Alexander City