Local mom Kimberly Diemond, understandably concerned about her children, has decided to turn in frustration to advocating for violence against her peaceful neighbors in a hopeless crusade against drugs. She calls for prohibition of synthetic pot in this feature story by the Keene Sentinel’s Danielle Rivard.
What Kim is advocating is prohibition. It didn’t work when they prohibited alcohol, it’s not working on cannabis and other illegal drugs, and it won’t work on synthetic marijuana or “bath salts”.
The article outlines some very scary stories that have happened to people who have smoked these synthetic research chemicals – there’s no doubt that they are untested and possibly dangerous. There’s also little doubt they would exist at all, were it not for Kim’s war on drugs. It’s because of the fact that cannabis is prohibited that the people marketing these other products are successful. Cannabis is nowhere near as dangerous as the research chemicals have the potential to be. Cannabis has been used for thousands of years. It’s a relatively benign drug and some would say it works miracles.
However, people with the same mindset as Kim Diemond are the reason why cannabis is still illegal. Little do they realize that their own prohibition is responsible for creating greater and greater threats to their children.
Arresting people is not a way out of the drug problem. Putting addicts in jail is not helping them. Adding even more people to the jails in the name of stopping these research chemicals is just continuing and expanding the insanity of the “War on drugs”, which is really just a war on our family, friends, and neighbors.
Hopefully the city council will send a message that prohibition should end – not expand in Keene, and everywhere, for that matter. (They meet about this issue tomorrow night at 6:30.) It’s time to stop treating people with a problem (or peaceful, recreational users) like criminals.
By the way, Kim Diemond is the same mother that had her teenage daughter run away recently. Anyone who was once a teenager knows how much of a challenge they can be to raise, but the solution to your teen’s problems don’t lie in threatening businesses and individuals with criminal sanctions. Try love as your solution rather than anger.
The letter Diemond wrote to the council is here in the city council packet for tomorrow night.
