Drugs, Sex, Right and Wrong - Confusion in the USA

I have a nineteen year old son. Raising him to become a fair and honorable man has been something like walking on a tightrope. I've tried to balance being a straight and good mom with plenty of room for fun and mistakes. It's sure not easy. I want my son to be respectful to women. It's hard to teach that when most of all he sees on television is half naked women acting very desperate. I want my son to be law abiding and I even wish for him to have a level of respect for authority. Again, it's hard to teach that when most of what he's seen is people taking advantage of their authority.

Just last week I was in a typical Midwest city. This particular city struck me as being completely confused. In all reality I find our whole country confused but this town stood out to me in ways that made me understand the confusion. It's what most people would call a college town. The college itself is a dry campus and surrounding the campus are businesses thriving on the sale of alcohol and often drug paraphernalia. Students in the area will tell you openly that minor in possession tickets are big business in the area.

The laws in this city are pretty much the standard on marijuana and drugs. Yet, at every gas station and convenience store I visited, they openly sell glass pipes and various paraphernalia. Our country ruins the lives of people for mere possession and stores can legally sell paraphernalia. Our children are told to "Just say No to Drugs" while stores sell glass pipes on the same shelves as chewing gum. The same pipe that the store can sell to your child legally can add to charges against your child if he or she uses it even once to smoke pot. One block from the college where all walks of people have sent their kids to learn how to get by in this world, there are stores pushing the very things at them that we strive so to keep them away from.

Confusion is not limited to drugs and alcohol in this city. The rate of STD's is very high yet there are numerous adult clubs even in the city limits. The legal age for drinking is twenty one but you only have to be eighteen to go see a stripper. The world would have to be extremely naive to believe that the eighteen year olds attending these clubs aren't also finding liquor easy enough. While in school these young men are being told to respect the girls sitting next to them and stop the moment they say to , at night they're buying lap dances and finding things right in their faces. The innocent young women trying to find their way surely suffer from all this adult club action as well. The pressure to dress seductively and keep up with the women that dance in these clubs surely fuels bad decisions.

As I said in the beginning, our whole country is in a state of confusion right now. We imprison our own citizens at a rate higher than any country in the entire world. Our laws allow eighteen year olds to go into adult clubs and pay to touch women for a few dollars , women that will never say no. Then, they go back to school to our daughters and both will have to deal with the ramifications. At eighteen we can fight and die for our county yet we're not old enough to drink a beer. We boldly advertise to the world our war on drugs *aka* war on American children, and still our gas stations and corner stores legally sell drug paraphernalia.

Our laws are incredibly out of date and millions of American families are paying for it. Beautiful young people are rotting and wasting their lives away in privatized prison cells all over our country. It's obvious that people don't know what to do . The confusion seems to be braided into our society on so many levels. Even the four hour drive to this city was dotted with strip clubs in nearly every other town. This was right in the heart of what America calls it's bible belt. Who on earth would expect people to grow up knowing what's right and wrong with such mixed signals at every turn?!

It seems it's time for America to make some bold changes. We need to be a country by and for the people again. Fathers and Mothers need to make a stand and demand a change in current policies and mandatory sentences for what should be nothing more than a minor infraction. We need to make bold choices about hard issues such as drugs and sexuality. We need to realize these things are woven into our social fabric and we need to find humane ways to deal with them. It's time to stop punishing people for being people. Prison cells should be filled with only those who intentionally hurt or harm someone. Restitution for crimes such as petty theft and property damage makes so much more sense than ruining what could otherwise be a productive life.

Kindness, fairness, and good intent need to be pushed to the forefront of our policies. America doesn't need to have a war on it's own people. We need to find ways to make America the land of the free again. The lives of our children's children depend on us.