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GHB not the real problem

To the editor,

The editorial on the meaning of the recent law on GHB, "liquid ecstasy," contains two premises that should be made clear. One, that drugs should be illegal, i.e. the voluntary self-ingestion of a possibly harmful substance should be illegal (some people use GHB and other drugs for personal pleasure, not to commit rape). That's common enough, even if I don't agree.

But the second premise is that we should ban certain things in order to reduce crime. In this case, the editorial board of the Wildcat is arguing that by making GHB a Schedule One drug, the federal government can make it harder for rapists to use it in a crime and thereby reduce rape. But banning one thing because it is used to commit a crime begs for a huge list of legitimate things to also be banned: guns, knives, sticks, baseball bats, ladders, buckets, bath tubs, swimming pools ... Hey why don't we go full scale and just ban humans? That would reduce crime.

Rachael Ludwick

Math/computer science junior