August 20, 2010 — For a person who wants to be Kentucky’s next U. S. senator, Dr. Rand Paul may be his own worst enemy. His latest misstep was to question the use of federal funds to fight the drug epidemic in East Kentucky through undercover investigations and drug treatment programs. His new press secretary tried to explain that he had been misquoted but the original statement had spread like wildfire.
We suggest that anyone seeking public office in this state can get accurate information on our drug problem from the following reliable sources:
1. Parents, grandparents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, and children who spend thousands of dollars and offer countless prayers for their loved ones who lie, cheat, and steal to obtain drugs.
2. Law enforcement officers who might spend 80-90 percent of their time on drug-related crimes.
3. Funeral directors who are burying drug overdose victims on a regular basis.
4. Doctors and nurses who deliver and care for critically ill babies born to drug-addicted mothers.
5. Teachers trying to educate drug-damaged children often incapable of real learning.
6. Social workers and foster parents who care for orphaned or abandoned children robbed of parents by the drug scourge.
7. Legislators and other elected officials who can’t build jails fast enough or large enough to hold all of the drug criminals.
8. Counselors at drug clinics with long waiting lists of addicts needing rehabilitation, most of whom cannot afford treatment without the help of UNITE or other agencies.
We suggest Dr. Paul or any other candidate sit down with an authority like Congressman Hal Rogers and get the cold, hard facts about illegal drugs.
Or they might visit a funeral home where a devastated family tries to make sense of a senseless tragedy. Or a jail visiting room where confused little children cry for a parent behind the glass who can’t go home.
A drug clinic in Pike County has a wall poster that says addicts only have three choices in life: get cleaned up, get locked up or get covered up.
In the case of anyone who would try to minimize this catastrophic problem, we say:
Wise up!
