Another victim of the War on Drugs

This is a sad story to start the week but it's important to look at the myriad ways this war on some drugs and especially in the context of it's attack on teenagers in the name of prevention does more harm than good. All the school drug raids in the world would not have saved 15 year old Jillian Cleary's life.

Julian was from a large and loving family and was according to her father, "a good kid." Of all five children in the family, she was the one they worried about the least. Now she's dead from an apparent methamphetamine overdose because she and her friends were afraid to admit they were experimenting with the drug and thus didn't ask for help when she got sick. She died from aspirating her own vomit.

In my day, she would have tried cannabis and been none the worse for it, but the unintended consequence of the Bush administration's war on our plant has caused meth to be more easily available than weed. As her father points out, all teenagers, no matter how exemplary their conduct, will experiment
with substances even if it's only beer. Meth was probably easier to get than beer for these kids as well.

Honest education and sensible drug policy could have prevented her death. How many more children will die as a result of an unregulated black market for drugs before the electorate demands an end to this failed war?