Annmarie Throckmorton, M.A.
- Aug 20, 2018

If you work for me do not get wasted.

Absolutely any government job should require routine weekly drug testing, including the President and the Congress and law enforcement and teachers and city/state employees and the government contractors who provide goods and services to the government. Test them all and let the drug test results sort them out: "Here's your paycheck." or "You're fired." Anyone who works for the government should be “shovel ready”. If you are wasted, or semi-wasted from the night before, you are not ready to work. Not for me you are not.

Having said that, I feel that if a human being wants to use psychotropic substances, that is their own affair. Drug use entails the most personal rights to govern one’s own mental activity, moods, perceptions, and behavior. It may be that drugs can bring one to higher understands that are available in no other way.

There are many reasons people do drugs: simple curiosity, despairing and seeking joy, exploration of altered states, ancient religious rituals, young and stupid, just plain stupid, and seeking enlightenment. It is difficult to know what is and what is not a valid reason to do drugs. There are important reasons not to do drugs: drugs detract from learning how to live life the natural way without substances other than food and drink; and drugs can ruin your life or even take it. But I believe that if you choose to work for the government, then you owe it to the rest of us not to be drug impaired when making decisions and working for us. Whatever the intent in taking them, drugs impair cognition and motor skills. This is another kind of higher understanding, one of what is required to make a safe, sane world.

If there were a national referendum I would vote to make all drugs legal; with a simultaneous program to make the damaging and lethal drugs unavailable. It is a grievous injustice to put someone into the horrors of prison (violence, rape, degradation) when their intent in using drugs was relief from the pains of life, to play, or to achieve a higher understanding. Others are welcome to their opinions and must vote their conscience, if we are ever given the opportunity.