Painkillers now kill more Americans than any illegal drug
I&#x27;ve never taken an illegal drug in my life. I&#x27;ve smoked a cigarette about 5 times. I drank in college but lately I&#x27;ve cut that out of my life as well. I had a security clearance with drug testing requirements for a while and now I just don&#x27;t like the feeling of a hangover from alcohol or the risk of ingesting random plants&#x2F;chemicals made by shady people.<p>In short: I&#x27;m the most vanilla, square, anti-drug person you can find. I don&#x27;t want to use them, and I think other people would be better off if they reduced their usage as well.<p>Yet I can not for the life of me understand why drugs are illegal. Not just pot, all drugs. I&#x27;m totally onboard with making it our public policy that we want to reduce the use of drugs. That makes perfect sense to me. It does not make sense to me why anyone still believes that using the criminal justice system as the mechanism for getting to that goal is the right path. We are spending insane amounts of money on a failed approach while also generating huge negative side effects by creating an enormous group of people with criminal records. It&#x27;s probably the worst thing this country has done to our own people since segregation and it seems like all of the policy people understand this. Why can&#x27;t we get political will to do something different?