Zombies! That’s the explanation we’ve heard in recent weeks in response to the strange and increasingly more disturbing list of episodes with people and their entrails being consumed or taken out of the body. The Centers for Disease Control has even issued reports reassuring people of no connection to any kind of movie-like zombie apocaypse. But there is metaphorical value in the comparison. Recent behavior is the result of some type of zombie, but not the type we see in popular horror flicks. At least one of the incidents was at first connected with a new drug known as “Bath salts”, a variation of LSD. Later reports say there was in fact marijuana in the system of the offender (the Florida face-eater). This is the drug zombie.
We hear all the time that we should stop fighting the war on drugs, that it costs too much money and it would be far better for the government to get revenue on regulated recreational drugs. Well I realize this is a small string of possibly isolated incidents, but it does demonstrate what drugs can do. They make people crazy. This is perhaps an extreme situation to show what drugs are doing to society as a whole. Because there are always new forms, beyond the traditional cannabis and cocaine that we just aren’t aware of, that are slipping under the doors at nightclubs and parties. As society advances, so do drugs. I won’t be the first one to point out the gateway message, that if legalized, cannabis will lead to other, harder drugs, maybe even get someone to experiment with these bath salts.
Again, let’s look at this as a warning of what may be coming if drugs in America are not continually attacked. If we legalize softer drugs now, will everyone be eating everyone else’s faces off in ten years? No. But I think history shows when one compromise is made, when some evil force in society or the world is accommodated, it snowballs into something much more horrible. It’s true, the War on Drugs takes money. But it also has not been fought effectively. We can look to another gory example of this at the Mexican border. We obviously need better battle plans, more officers, more strategy. This can’t be treated as a political point; it must be fought as a war. We should have focuses in society. There are many things the government does that it need not. So perhaps we have to look at our problems and decide which ones are worth funding and energy, before we make zombies of us all.
