I received a fair amount of email re:yesterday's entry. Made me think I did a really sloppy job of saying what I wanted to say. So let me go on about it some more...

I guess I didn't really do too well explaining myself. Let me try again... I have this gut feeling that addicts are addicts. Dope, crack, heroin, booze. There is no difference in the way their lives play out. In the ED, we see 10X the people injured by alcohol than we do all other drugs combined. And usually, if we get some guy that tests + for MJ or coke, they've also got a load of alcohol. And the only time we see OD's are suicide attempts. Granted, Topeka isn't a large metro center...
But the main point is: a large percentage of people, like 50%, use illegal recreational drugs. They are not criminals in any other way, but rather productive citizens. But according to the law, they're criminals. Half of our population! I'm not a drug user (other than caffeine and nicotine) but I am an alcoholic, and I have inhaled MJ smoke in the past (it did nothing for me at all, like most alcoholics) so I don't have a personal ax to grind. I just think spending so much money and hiring so many cops is stupid; if it's a war, we've lost, 'cause it's the wrong war!
The war is against criminals. The goal is to make law-abiding citizens safe and productive. Making half of them criminals is not a logical approach!
Why not?

Taking drugs away from criminals will not turn them into law-abiding citizens.
Drugs, in and of themselves, will not make a criminal out of an otherwise law-abiding citizen.
Drug use is a morality issue; it cannot be legislated, it's been tried.

So why waste the money? My money, your money. Buy more cops. It bothers me a lot that we have reduced the size of our national armed forces and increased the number of cops by a like amount. I have nothing against cops per se, but they don't like to be bored. It's in their nature to find something to do. Like enforcing traffic laws (indeed, a necessary evil) even when they can't catch the guy who breaks out my window and steals stuff out of my car. And they don't even try. It seems to be more fun to sit on a corner with a radar gun and ticket regular people. That way they don't have to put up with real criminals, who are, usually, unsavory people...

I'm getting way off the subject, because I can't think of anything else to say about the subject that I haven't already said. The logic stops here. Or maybe quite a while ago, in a land far away...

Karen and I got to bed around 22:30, but I woke up at 03:00 and been on-line since then. It's 05:30 and Karen's alarm just went off, poor girl, she's gotta go to work. Me, I think I'll go back to bed. I gotta lotta stuff to do this afternoon, so I wanta be able to stay awake when I get up around 12:00.

There will be more later...

Had a good long nap... too long. Got some stuff done after I woke up, but not much. I called Betsy to see if I could go fishing tomorrow and got roped into doing Sunday kennels at the Topeka Cat Association... cleaning the kennels and feeding, watering, medicating etc. Before I worked nights, I would do Sunday kennels twice a month. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes not.

Doug and I are going fishing tomorrow afternoon, probably 'til dark. It's been a couple of weeks since I've been, I'm looking forward to it.

Karen and I went for a walk in the park before dark. Been a long time since we walked, too. It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful evening. Legs are sore now. And it's getting dark so early now, too. Anyway, after our walk, we went to Baskin-Robbins for some ice cream as a reward. Mint chocolate, my favorite, and a scoop of Chocolate fudge, too.

Bill impressed me again; Karen and I watched, and I was laying on the couch. I closed my eyes...dozed for a while, until scrambles, who was on the back of the couch, started scratching himself and fell on me. I like Bill a lot more than I like Dole, no surprise, I like almost everybody more than I like Dole... anyway...