Personal Hero: Walter Cronkite and his support of the DPA

When I was a girl I was fond of sitting on the couch watching drug deals and people doing cocaine on Miami Vice, the series that epitomized 80s excess. I would sing, “Users are losers, and losers are users, so don’t use drugs, don’t use drugs”. The DARE(Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program educated me on avoiding people partaking illicit drugs and how to recognize the sites and smells associated with illegal substances. In my young mind, marijuana, cocaine, and heroin were the dirtiest, most foul depths a person could sink to. My perspective was black and white at the time and drugs were completely evil.

As I got older, I learned that many pharmaceuticals utilized the very drugs that on the street were considered anathema, so what was the difference? A prescription and name change could turn a heroine derivative into an acceptable, much needed pain reliever? I was beginning to learn that there were a lot of gray areas and that some illegal drugs had benefits to the medical establishment.

Because of their illegal nature, I was reticent to put my name on petitions for the government to legalize some illicit drugs for medical use (particularly marijuana since that is the one that appears to benefit glaucoma, cancer, and MS patients the most). Here’s where Walter “The Most Trusted Man in America” Cronkite comes in. He wrote what I would consider a fund raising letter on behalf of the Drug Policy Alliance. I was absolutely astonished by his whole-hearted condemnation of the War on Drugs. To have such a respected former journalist supporting an organization in such contradiction of the government’s policies was, in my mind, incredible.

He bravely observes that the War on Drugs is a failure, “Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this effort-with no one held accountable for its failure”.

He tells us about those people unjustly hurt by this so-called war, people imprisoned for ludicrous terms when their mistakes were being in the wrong place at the wrong time. People who were poor and desperate who made the wrong decisions, but are now paying the price in prisons that are already overcrowded with addicts who need treatment not imprisonment.

The hypocrisy our government perpetrates on a daily basis to continue to deny the American people reasonable medical relief. Walter says, “The federal government has fought terminally ill patients whose doctors say medical marijuana could provide a modicum of relief from their suffering…as though a cancer patient who uses marijuana to relieve the wrenching nausea caused by chemotherapy is somehow a criminal who threatens the public”. When will we stop wasting time and money on condemnation instead of recognizing that some substances have legitimate and studied medical benefits?

Please support the Drug Policy Alliance, they are an active leader in “fighting for desperately needed on-the-ground reforms”. We need policies based on medical facts and humane treatment of those with addictions not arbitrary mandatory sentences for people. Thank you Mr. Cronkite for opening my eyes to this waste of money and resources. Thank you for advocating for those who’s voices are not being heard, the sick, the imprisoned, and I will gladly add my voice to yours.