Issue 1 debate brought matters to our attention

This letter is in response to the defeat of Issue 1.

It can be said that one positive outcome of the defeat is that the issues were brought to our attention.

The people who make their living off of societal problems, including judges and prosecutors, those who defend criminals and those who run jails, enjoy the money they make on addicts.

They are also drunk on the power they have over others. Sad fact is we have become a nation of drug addicts, duped by myths created and fostered by the psychopharmaceuticals industry.

How unfair that these myths about behaviors, which are actually usually responses, have been allowed to permeate and infect our society.

A book called “Drugging Our Children: How Profiteers Are Pushing Antipsychotics on Our Youngest, and What We Can Do to Stop It,” by Sharna Olfman and Brent Dean Robbins, Eds., (2012), lays out the eye-opening ideas which led to our passing the Family First Prevention Services Act, a new law that hopes to serve to end unnecessary institutionalization and drugging of children in the foster care system.

Did you know that children of poor parents, who are on Medicaid, are more likely to be diagnosed with mental disorders and drugged? Did you know that some primary care physicians and pediatricians have been giving psychotropics and anti-psychotics to people who don’t actually need them for years?

Why are we even surprised that people are turning to drugs?

Are legal but dangerous and unnecessary drugs OK with us because they are prescribed? Are we aware that judges and prosecutors have the flexibility to decide who gets to use alternatives to incarceration and institutionalization?

In other words, the powers that be want to retain the ability to pick winners and losers in our world.

Many who spoke out against Issue 1, are the same people who have been targeting certain children with institutionalization and “legal” drugging. One word comes to mind: Hypocrites, especially since we have become a nation of addicts.

Robin Neff

Chardon