How in heavens name will legalizing drugs help the young and innocent victims of someone else's drug use? Drug use is no "victimless crime". These crimes are caused by drug use NOT drugs laws. Here are only a few of the countless "innocent victims".
2-year-old girl thrown from van by man who had been smoking hash oil and drinking, he thought she was a bag of garbage.
10-year-old girl killed when thrown from apartment balcony by her mother's drunken boyfriend.
5-year-old battered, starved, hair pulled out in chunks by mother's 23-year-old marijuana and speed using boyfriend.
21-month-old baby girl died, no food or drink for 2 days, while mother binged on cocaine.
13-year-old girl killed while babysitting, throat slashed by drugged-out 22-year-old intruder.
4-month-old girl sold for $10.00 by father to get money for crack.
6 people killed in car crash by 20-year-old female driver with record amount of THC (from marijuana) in her system.
10-year-old girl strangled by 27-year-old man who had been drinking and smoking marijuana.
4-month-old boy beaten, 4 skull fractures, 5 broken leg bones, arm broken and permanently crippled by coke addicted mother.
3-month-old baby boy whose mother traded him for a $20 piece of crack.
20-year-old woman battered to death by 3 brothers high on LSD.
34-year-old woman killed by drug dealers because of her anti-drug work.
11-month-old baby bitten all over body by cocaine using boyfriend of mother.
kitten drugged, shaved and dropped from 12th floor window by 17-year-old male high on drugs.
17-year-old girl raped, tortured and killed by two young men who then got high before burning her body beyond recognition.
10 week old boy beaten by cocaine addict father, boy is brain damaged, blind, & deaf.
6 month old girl dead, beaten by cocaine addict father, she suffered 20 broken bones and weighed 10 pounds when she died.
young woman killed by girl on LSD trip, she thought the young woman was a demon.
Her mother was a crack addict with four other children and a house that smelled of urine and faeces. She died at 21 months of age. Her mother had whipped her with a belt or coat hangers; she was punched and kicked; three of her teeth were knocked out; her body was black and blue. The pathologist found that her tiny buttocks were dunked in scalding water.
A young mother left her two infants in a filthy apartment with only marijuana plants, several firearms and a blaring stereo for company while she went off with several male friends. Officers notified that the children were alone found a boy 10 months old in a crib and a girl 22 months on mattresses on the floor. Both were in soiled diapers which the police changed. On a shelf in the closet were marijuana plants. In the room across the hall, more marijuana was growing under special lights. In that room police also found two rifles. Also found was a Dirty Harry-style .44 magnum handgun.
There is growing medical concern that the very young children of cocaine addicted parents can be hurt by breathing the drug-laced air in their homes. Physicians in New York, Portland, Oregon and Richmond, Virginia described in interviews a total of a dozen cases of babies and toddlers who had seizures or became extremely drowsy and unable to stand up after inhaling smoke from crack that others were using in their homes. In other cases, the same symptoms appeared after addicts had admitted deliberately blowing crack smoke into babies' faces for the addicts' amusement, or in some cases, in an effort to calm a cranky baby. And the medical examiner in Philadelphia says that crack smoke itself may even be contributing to the deaths of children exposed to it. He believes that crack smoke has been a factor in the deaths of seven children since April and 17 in the past 3 years. All of the 17 were under the age of one.
Dr. David Bateman, chief of newborn services at Harlem Hospital Centre in New York said "We're most fearful about cocaine exposure on the developing brain." Dr. Bateman and a colleague, Dr. Margaret Heagarty reported in the American Journal of Diseases of Children that a correlation existed between infants and toddlers seizures and other neurological symptoms to the passive inhalation of crack smoke.
In terms of the number of children involved, Dr. Bateman said "What we're seeing is probably just the tip of the iceberg," because most affected children probably are not taken to hospitals. (Source: Jeanette McDougal, Drug Watch Minnesota, St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch, Jan. 31, 1990)
Lower IQ in toddlers linked to prenatal exposure to marijuana...Researchers found "significant negative effects of prenatal marijuana exposure on the performance" of both African American and Caucasian children in standard intelligence tests. This negative effect on the child was related to marijuana exposure during the first and second trimester of pregnancy. On average, children exposed prenatally to marijuana will have a lower IQ compared to children who are not exposed, even when the effects of various environmental factors are adjusted. (Source: Marijuana Research Review 2(4):9/95. Neurotoxicology and Teratology 16:16--175, 1994)
Legalizing marijuana would be a disaster. It would create a pediatric epidemic for which we would pay a dreadful price in terms of more damaged children and more damaged adults when they grow up. (Source: Herbert D. Kleber, Executive Vice President of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.)
The Central Narcotics Intelligence Bureau of the Egyptian Government has tried to combat the use of hashish, and in its Annual Report 1944 (70) said: ...the prepared product of the cannabis sativa plant..... is capable of profoundly disturbing the brain cells and of inducing acts of violence, even murder; it is in fact a thoroughly vicious and dangerous thing of no value whatever to humanity and deserving of nothing but the odium and contempt of civilized people.' (Source: Cannabis and Mental Functions, David Copestake, BA (Psych), BD. MPhil.)
I love it here. The warmth and closeness of my mother make me feel secure. Her heartbeat echoes mine, and at quiet times like this I know she loves me. I wish it were quiet all the time.
I love it here. But the warmth and quiet are gone again. Her heartbeat races and pounds through my body. My heartbeat echoes hers and the noise and pain is frightening. I don't like this feeling, these sounds and things that are happening to me. Why is she doing this to me? Please make it quiet again.
I loved it there. Her heartbeat slowed but mine, weaker, echoed and died away. It's quiet all the time now.
(Anonymous - dead prenatally from illicit drug use.)