LETTER: New drug programs won’t fix root problem

Talk about it

To the Editor:

Governor Daugaard’s March 13 column was a very deceptive piece of propaganda, as it portrayed this year’s South Dakota Legislature as one that “works with constituents,” “allows public input and open discussion,” and uses a “common sense approach” with “citizen legislators.”

There was a time that I would have believed that hogwash, but experience, observation, and all coupled with research has made me much more discerning. The Legislature works for special interests, committee hearings are simply theater productions of what was agreed to behind the scenes. The prison reforms lacked logic and common sense.

Yes, our prison population has risen dramatically due to increased drug and alcohol abuse and sexual predators. It was nearly 20 years ago that I began writing in this paper in order to inform the readers on research. Our elementary health curriculum, along with D.A.R.E., was wrong-headed and would cause the increases which have now been recognized. And do I really need to mention public school’s socalled sex education’s role in the numerous sexual crimes and willing victims we have in our society today?

Sadly, none of the prison reforms dealt with those root causes, namely the secular scientific psychological-based ethics replacing traditional moral values. How can that failure represent a “common sense” approach?

The House majority leader even admitted the legislators are not capable of writing such legislation. Instead it requires “stakeholders,” a buzz word that means executive branch, judicial branch, and other special interests. Instead of the Legislature representing constituents, we have a Legislature that “rubber stamps” what special interests want … namely taxpayers’ money and/or control over the citizens.

Then we have the so-called “bipartisan economic development package” that was put together behind the scenes. The empty “Hoghouse” version passed a Senate committee, the Senate chamber, and then a House committee before the general public was to learn about the content of the legislation. Strangely nearly 20 special interest lobbyists testified in favor of the mystery bill, that they must have known beforehand would line their pockets with taxpayers’ money. And this is supposed to represent open discussion with public (taxpayer) input? Hogwash.

Tags: opinion, updates, letters, drugs, state, alcohol, legislature, crime, courts