America has a drug problem. That’s not news. For some reason the demand for drugs is a pandemic that has been around much longer than COVID-19. Nixon even declared a so-called war on drugs. We locked up some drug dealers and addicts but decades later the problem is worse than before.

We have hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths with the resulting misery that comes from that. I will leave it to the psychologists and sociologists to try and understand why people would rather be stoned than sober, why there is such a demand for drugs. I have an opinion on what to do about the supply side of the drug pandemic.

We need a real war on drugs. We need some leadership. I can’t understand why my country thought I should go thousands of miles away to shoot some guy in black pajamas with an AK-47 who just wanted to see the invader gone but he was an enemy of our state and those who are killing my country enjoy legal protection. I lost a fire team partner over there, a cousin and some classmates. I lost a son to the drug pandemic.

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and we decided that within the hundreds of thousands of American citizens a few might be a threat so we interned thousands of good American citizens. I can’t understand why we sit by and watch China and Mexico supply the cartels with literally tons of drugs and bring them across our open borders, supply the gangs with them for distribution and then fight over drug distribution territory, shoot up the inner cities then call it gun violence.

I had a little experience in war and my idea is that we should really fight a war on drugs. The first phase should be that Congress exercise its constitutional authority and declare war. A war on drugs that designates the suppliers as enemies of the state. If you are MS13 or in another gang, you are headed to an internment camp complete with barbed wire and machine gun towers. Like Lincoln did in the Civil War, habeas corpus should be suspended until the war is won. You might get out if you supply good information on the suppliers.

The new idea of treating addicts who want something different is the right approach, but it is going to take time to set up programs. In the meantime, it is past time for a real war on the supply side. It is time to rid our nation of this threat. It is time to eliminate the enemy. We have that capability, what is lacking is the will.

Our “leadership” has had decades to act. It’s time to demand that they support America with the same enthusiasm they show to their big political donors. If they won’t act it is time for new leadership, a new congress, a real president.

Steve Culley

La Grande