The Burden of Personal Responsibility
“I’m for law and order
The way that it should be
This song’s about the night they spent
Protecting you from me”
– Waylon Jennings
“Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand”
At midday Friday, October 10, 2025, a Calhoun County Circuit Court judge in an Anniston, Alabama, courtroom sentenced 54-year-old Johnny Paul King to life in prison without the possibility of parole. King’s criminal history, while substantial, nevertheless consisted entirely of drug charges and driving infractions. The reason such a severe sentence was possible is due to the state’s Habitual Felony Offender Act, which sets mandatory guidelines and puts felony drug charges on par with murder, rape, robbery, and burglary.
King had eighteen felony drug convictions over his life, and the latest from a few months earlier triggered a criteria which mandated a sentence of life in prison. The law granted the judge discretion of life with or without the possibility of parole, and she (holding an elected position and possibly not wanting to be seen as soft on crime) brought the hammer down with the maximum penalty. This initiated a debate in our community about the justice of such a law.
I have been involved in the criminal justice system in Calhoun County as a peace officer for nearly three decades. If I had any interactions with King, they were insignificant enough that I do not remember them. so, while I cannot comment on his character, most of my colleagues seem to agree with the judge’s decision and maintain that King was, as I heard a couple of times, “not a contributing member of society.”
I found it interesting that, while perusing his extensive list of charges over the years, I found none of resisting arrest, attempting to flee, or escaping from custody. To my knowledge, no officer was ever injured in his or her multitudinous dealings with King. This is certainly not always the case with a career criminal. And since that record was void of any charges of violence, I find it safe to assume that, of all the people in his life that Johnny Paul King sold or gave drugs to, none had to be held down against their will to complete the transaction.
This in no way means that I advocate (in King's instance) methamphetamine trafficking as an honorable trade. It in no way implies that I think being a supplier of something that has such devastating effects on the people who partake of such a drug is anything but morally reprehensible. What it does mean is that I observe the murderers, rapists, child molesters, burglars, and robbers who were convicted of their crimes yet now walk free amongst us and consider that citizens questioning the justice of such a system may not be completely off their rockers.
***
Early in their education, law students learn about the difference between mala in se laws (the Latin legal term for acts considered inherently wrong or evil, “evil in itself,” rooted in the common law) and mala prohibita laws (acts deemed wrong only because a statute prohibits them). Seemingly, man has a natural inclination to welcome the prohibition of things he does not struggle with and that he considers “bad” for society. However, he is likely to balk when the government wants to mandate something he extremely dislikes or prohibit something he really enjoys or values.
It is then that the lover of law and order sometimes becomes a bellowing, freedom-loving libertarian, channeling Patrick Henry and sharing Braveheart memes. For the individual, mala prohibita has then reached its limit. “Rules for thee, but not for me.” Leave my vice alone! What have studies and our own experiences shown us about what effect the legality of something has upon peoples’ decision to engage in it?
A doctor may implore his patient to change his diet and his lifestyle with dire predictions of ill health, diabetes, cancer, or an early death. He is not inhibited by the legality of his patient's choices. The patient is not going to make much leeway with his doctor by exclaiming, “But, doc, all these things I do are completely legal!” An adulterer or a gambler may be moved by landing at rock bottom amid the disastrous consequences his actions have on his relationship with God and his family without criminality needing to be attached to his choices. A heroin fiend may spend decades of his life a slave to his addiction, daily violating the civil magistrates, making a catastrophe of his life. Never have I heard one say what finally turned his life around was when his conscience finally came to grips with the fact that what he was doing was against the law.
Let us face some tough questions. Do drug laws work? Have recidivism rates declined as a result of criminalization? Does incarceration “rehabilitate” or “correct” the general offender? Are we “taking drugs off the street?” This is one we often hear, as we heard in the case of the aforementioned Johnny Paul King. Immediately following the life without parole verdict, the local newspaper quoted the prosecuting assistant district attorney: “We're thankful that we're getting more narcotics off the streets so that it doesn't impact our community in any more serious way.” This is one of the more ludicrous claims of drug law supporters. It is the equivalent of scooping up a pile of sand with a pail on the beach, and claiming that future beachgoers were now safer from sand contact as a result.
The patrons of Johnny Paul King have moved on to different merchants, I assure you. The reasons governments were instituted among men have been debated by Americans since Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration.
Here is my take. Crimes should be about a human being harming another human being against the latter's will (this includes property crimes). It should not be about what grown people do to themselves. We tried this with Prohibition. It was a miserable failure. We've been fighting this "war on drugs" on a national level since at least 1970. It has also been a miserable failure.
Of the myriad issues addressed at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, prohibiting by law what citizens could consume was not one of them. Somehow, we got through the rest of that century and the next with nary a peep about such government involvement. Of course, that was a time when personal responsibility held much more traction. As a lover of liberty, I do not want the government vested with the power of being able to tell me what I can and cannot do when I am not causing harm to other people. That falls within the realm and burden of personal responsibility. That is between me and my God.
I do not want a cradle-to-grave nanny government telling me to wear my seat belt, take this vaccine, eat this food (but not THAT one!), wear this mask, take this drug (but not THAT one!!), give us your guns, or anything else they do in the guise that they can take care of me better than I can or that they can make decisions for me that I am just not competent enough to make myself.
Upon the scales of justice in our system of criminal jurisprudence, the excuses we use to justify our actions or inaction should matter less than the results. Many will justify drug crimes by wielding the “gateway” argument, that drug abuse begets further and deeper drug abuse and this leads a person to commit further crimes. But depression, job loss, senses of entitlement, and the embracement and proliferation of victimhood are but a few legal things that also motivate folks to lives of crime, as well. Will outlawing them make them go away? Just plain wickedness also steers many lawbreakers.
Our government has already fought a “War on Terror.” Might we broaden that offensive to wage “war” on other common nouns and intense feelings? Might we employ our armed forces to fight a “War on Melancholy,” in order to stem the slide from that gateway feeling toward more sinister crimes? And if we can't lock away people who have caused harm to someone else against that person's will because we overpopulate our jails and prisons with people who possess drugs or sell them to willing participants, I think that's a justice problem.
In Alabama, we routinely see higher bonds and stiffer sentences for drug charges than crimes against people, including murder. I cannot get behind that. Life without parole is a high price for citizens to fund. We should execute our murderers, rapists, and child molesters, and focus our taxpayer capital on removing from society those people intent on harming others.
***
Allow me to contrast Johnny Paul King with a few other criminals from my corner of the globe. Our first profile in criminality is Edward Maurice Johnson. On November 13, 2017, I was in the middle of a four-year hiatus from being a lawman and was working at home on an off day from my regular job at a steel plant. I observed a male climbing over a fence into my pasture.
I encountered the man and held him at gunpoint while I phoned 911. He was toting a backpack. Its contents and the man’s identity were unknown to me. While I was still speaking with 911 dispatchers summoning police, the man had a change of heart and decided he would no longer comply. He fled. I pursued, pistol in one hand and cell phone in the other. The pursuit lasted about ten minutes, leaving my property and continuing onto that of my neighbors and side streets until police arrived to intercept him and place the trespasser into handcuffs. He was identified as Edward Maurice Johnson, a man whose acquaintance I had the pleasure of not meeting until that day.
Johnson had damaged my fence and trespassed upon my property, outside of interrupting the peace and tranquility of my home, my only earthly sanctuary. But, since he had only committed misdemeanors not witnessed by the officers, they had no authority to arrest. Despite my request that they at least take him away from me and my neighborhood first, they unhandcuffed him in front of me and I got to watch him walk away after I earnestly expressed to him the dire consequences of any such future occurrence. The following day I made a trip to the municipal court and swore out an arrest warrant against Johnson for trespassing.
Justice was delayed in my case for five years because the warrant remained unserved when, a few weeks later, Johnson was arrested in Piedmont, a town about twenty miles north of me, for the murder of 53-year-old Piedmont resident Marion Brown, beaten to death by Johnson. Johnson was convicted of Criminally Negligent Homicide and sentenced to prison. One might think, since Alabama sends drug manufacturers like Johnny Paul King to prison for life without the possibility of parole, that someone who beats another human being to death would at least get similar punishment. One would be wrong.
Johnson was arrested for the trespassing warrant I signed against him on November 12, 2022, one day shy of five years from me watching him walk away. That night he was stopped by a deputy while driving with a revoked license in that same town of Piedmont. Johnson had been freshly released from prison to continue his life of crime against human beings. Appearing in court, Johnson pleaded guilty to trespassing against me and was ordered to pay restitution for damaging my fence in the amount of $100.00 (which I have not seen).
Prior to my encounter with Johnson, his arrest record included charges for felony assault against a police officer, destroying state property, conspiracy to commit robbery, violation of a domestic violence protection order, felony escape first degree, and multiple counts of probation violation. He might be considered a prime candidate for not being “a contributing member of society.” Johnson has landed behind bars on fresh charges since those of trespassing on my property and murder in 2017, and, as I write, has an active warrant for his arrest for failure to appear issued on August 8, 2025.
***
Jevon Mathew Place is incarcerated in the Calhoun County Jail (again) as I write. Place has spent his adulthood violating the law and been in and out of our county jail and state prison. However, unlike Johnny Paul King, Place is not prone to comply with lawmen attempting to place him in custody. On June 20, 2022, I responded to a warrant tip at a residence in west Anniston. Place, less than four months after being released from our county jail, had two active felony probation violation warrants. I went to the back of the house and had visibility on two sides of the house, the back door, and several windows. While my partner went inside the front door, Place crawled out the only window I could not see and was fleeing across the back yard when I first saw him. I gave pursuit. Place went over a fence into the next yard. I followed, but my duty belt hung on the spikes on top of the fence. I came down awkwardly on my right knee, tearing my anterior cruciate ligament and a meniscus. Place was finally apprehended six months later, three days after I had been released from light duty following reconstructive surgery on my knee and six months of physical therapy.
Place was charged not only with the probation violations, but resisting arrest and eluding based on the crimes that led to my injury. He served a grand total of forty-one days before being released. Six months later, Place again eluded our deputies trying to pull him over before finally being tracked down and captured in surrounding woods. He spent more time in jail and then prison, but was released again. Place was then arrested again in September 2025. Odds are Place will again be a free man when you are reading this. My knee and my health will never be the same.
***
Bass player Teddy Gentry is a founding member of the Grammy-winning country music supergroup Alabama. As far as I know, Teddy has never been considered a menace to anyone. In fact, most feel he could be accurately described as a “contributing member of society” and not a viable threat to another human being. Yet, on September 12, 2022, the 70-year-old Gentry was arrested in Cherokee County, Alabama, for misdemeanor possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. That night I got to sleep well, knowing that Gentry was safely behind bars (for possessing a plant) thirty-five miles north of me. And I can also rest assured Johnny Paul King, now serving life without parole, will never be holding me down and forcing me to buy methamphetamine from him.
But Edward Maurice Johnson is still out there. Obviously, he knows where my family and I live, based on his brief stint as an unwanted guest. Sometimes I stand at the foot of my driveway and think about that time I watched him being unhandcuffed and walking down my road. I wonder, will he ever get the notion to come back? Will he be walking in the opposite direction, toward my house? God only knows. If so, I hope we will again be ready for him. Because if he comes, we will not be assuming it will be to pay me my hundred dollars.
[War on Drugs War on Drugs - Timeline in America, Definition & Facts | HISTORY]
Sentencing of Johnny Paul King: https://www.annistonstar.com/news/crime/calhoun-county-man-sentenced-to-life-without-parole-for-meth-trafficking/article_066f5f53-a935-4cef-bcb2-600de7f28a9f.html
Edward Maurice Johnson: https://share.google/iJitaWO5Mmt09uI4g
Arrest of Teddy Gentry: Teddy Gentry, founding member of country band Alabama, is arrested on a drug charge https://share.google/dqUGDwZYKajyoULFa
Introduction | The Constitution of the War on Drugs | Oxford Academic https://share.google/uyypgvEqkYiI0oz8q
Report: Alabama’s Habitual Offender Law — Smart Justice Alabama https://share.google/Md6zR6y4dTyAfQw9S
An outstanding and provocative piece by Josh Doggrell. In a purely theoretical sense, I’ve always had a problem as a putatively free citizen in a Constitutional Republic with the government legally mandating what I can or cannot ingest or inject into my own body. Big Brother most recently ordered millions of people under the threat of losing their job or ability to attend school or many other things to be injected with an experimental drug because of an irrational fear of Covid. Meanwhile, I remember very well the convictions of people during the 1950s for possession of small quantities of marijuana–as little as one joint–that typically resulted in jail or even prison time. It seems to me as adults we should have sovereignty over our own bodies. Do we make bad choices? Certainly. I recall a cartoon my mother posted on the refrigerator door of a terribly dilapidated older guy being given a checkup by his doctor with the doctor saying, “You should never have been trusted with your own body.”
Bemusement is my reaction whenever old, hippy, libertarians climb off their unicorns, take a big toke off a joint, and then invoke the pro-abortion argument “It’s my body!” The rich, or at least financially stable, are in a better position to make the claim than the wretched jamokes living in poverty; their wealth allows them to insulate the rest of us from their self indulgence, whereas the impoverished preys upon his family, his neighborhood, and eventually our society.
As a Christian (ok, post-Christian) culture, do we owe protection to the vulnerable? And then, What do we owe to those who have ruined their bodies, minds, and lives?
This is a toll for a road I haven’t traveled and is paid not only now for missed child support payments but in the future in terms of incarceration or hospitalization, or worse; an oft-repeated Rehabilitation Sanctuary, and Social Security, and Medicare, and Medicaid programs.
Let Teddy Gentry get stoned and drunk, if he stays home and isn’t driving, but Johnny Paul King is on welfare of some form, and he should be restricted from drinks and drugs.
Should we remove the guardrails? Not the ones on a mountain road, the ones between you and oncoming traffic on a freeway.
I’m all for stiffer penalties for criminal behavior that does harm or threatens harm to other folks or their goods. I’m probably for penalties so stiff it would get me thrown out of polite Catholic social circles. But I echo Mr. Easton’s comment about taking away the penalties for drug use, abuse, and dealing. In addition to it being a form of welfare, I also look at it from the perspective of trying to raise my kids – it’s hard enough to try to guard them against the LGBTQ+ brigades and porn slingers and other vice mongers that flood the airwaves and public spaces. Dealing with even more access and approval for recreational drugs just makes my job that much more difficult. And I’ve seen footage of streets in San Francisco and Philadelphia with folks standing around like a zombie horde – while the war on drugs may have been a boondoggle, I’m not ready to surrender to the pro-drug side.
Part of the problem is that we have such little sense of local community any more and we’re not allowed to police our own local communities. There’s no ability for Andy Griffith to distinguish between Otis the harmless drunk and an out-of-towner with ill intent. It feels like being in a Catch-22, because no laws will solve that problem, but the removal of certain laws (like those against recreational drugs) also doesn’t seem to solve the problem, either.
But I do agree, wholeheartedly, that if we can’t get murders and rapists executed (or, sigh, life without parole), putting non-violent, low-level drug pushers life without parole seems pointless, unjust, and a waste of taxpayer money.
To the bemused Mr. Easton,
Allow me to clear up some false assumptions. “Old,” while stinging, probably fits.
Anyone that knows me would never label me a “hippy.” Far right? Yes. Redneck? Sure. Certainly no dirty hippy.
I am and have never been “rich” or “wealthy.” I’m a cop. My wife is a stay-at-home mother and homeschooler. In this article I detailed dealing with a trespasser and surrounding crime at my residence. Three years ago a police pursuit came through my front yard before crashing through my fence and resuming on the roadway while I sat in my living room. I don’t think anything else needs to be said there. I am not “insulated” from you so as to be relaxed in my “self-indulgence.”
The next toke from a joint I take will be my first. So my motivation is not derived from the desire to see my indulgence legalized. My three favorite recreational drugs are alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. For reasons that may be enlightening to some, all three of those are legally permissable.
Yes, “It’s my body!” is a pro-abortion argument, but not a sensical one. If the abortive mother’s body was the primary issue, it would be her body that ceased to exist, and her life extinguished. She is not the victim of infanticide. In my individual freedom defense, the only body in question regarding health or harm belongs to the one making the decisions.
I don’t know if King was on some kind of welfare or not. If we want to discuss whether there should be restrictions on recipients of welfare programs I bet you and I would find a lot upon which to agree. Just as I am supportive of conditions on bonds for arrestees and for those who have been criminally convicted and are released on probation or parole.
I think I made clear in the article I do not defend people like King on moral grounds. But to lock away drug users and sellers to willing buyers at the detriment of protecting society from murderers and child molesters is not justice. And I refuse to get on board with a nanny government usurping my personal freedoms in the name of protecting the general welfare.
When Josh sent in this good piece, I told him it should provoke a lively conversation that could aim at clarifying and limiting the application of his argument. I think he made it clear that the basic question was proportionality: life in prison for selling substances that are either legal in some places or will be before too long. My own view of drug laws is that like Prohibition of alcohol, they are a bad idea, and the main consequence is a great boost to organized crime. On the other hand, once the State has declared something to be wrong, one has to be very careful about legalization, because in a servile country like the USofA–as opposed to countries like France and Italy where large numbers of people prefer to evade as many irksome regulations as they can–the subjects (herd animals that they are) will interpret it as a seal of approval that confers a right to do whatever it is everywhere and always at public expense.
In France and Italy, children drink wine at home and even in restaurants, so long as parents are with them. Once in France, my wife and I were staying in a famous monastery . Going into the excellent restaurant, we saw a sign in huge letters warning the minors could not consume alcohol, unless they were 16 or were with with their parents or guardians or at least some older person who could take responsibility. What a crackdown! France and Italy have much less problem with alcoholism than we do. In one of my favorite Wisconsin taverns (Baumgartner’s in Monroe), I asked our waiter about what beer to order. He said he was not allowed to drink beer because he was only 18. (Wisconsin had upped the age to 21.) Except, of course, when his parents were present.
Selling drugs to minors is a separate question, but there should be more serious penalties for people over 21 selling to people under 16, because of the long-term damage. What people in their 30s do to each other is not my business, though I imagine it used be a useful tool for intimidating members of the criminal class when nothing else could be proved.
I will say that my friend Jim Easton has scored very high on the imaginative scale in describing the straightest arrow I have ever met as a hippy, though I do recall someone very like him, but could not have been Josh, refusing to wear a mask in a North Charleston hotel. When I mentioned this, intending a compliment, he replied, “I’ll think about it, when someone says something.” I thought that kind of American was, like the passenger pigeon and the Carolina Parakeet, extinct.
Managing inevitable vice within a community is a difficult and frustrating as managing vice within your family and yourself. The extreme dichotomy of reaction between narcotics and violent disturbers of the peace is insane. And letting the disturbers of peace get away with it will bring our society down faster than letting the narcotics flow. But Mr Dowell makes a mistake if he implies it is one or the other, or the crack down on one must inevitably lead to the other. He may have just been pointing out the insanity to precipitate the discussion.
Managing vice in a community is not a new thing and much better ages with much wiser men have faced into it than ours. I think I remember Bellarmine and Aquinas counseling a “middens” allegorical model, similar to a red light district. I think I prefer their real life solutions of loosely managing a contained area, and coming down hard on any of the vice activity outside that area To Dr Fleming’s point, our dysfunctional communal brain may not be able to process that. We have this inherited theoretical Puritanism that won’t allow any acceptance that we live in a fallen world and utterly rejects any compromise with our fallen state. It’s the same destructive effect spiritual pride has on our individual souls, only at a polis level.
I apologize for not catching the baneful autocorrect of your name Mr. Doggrell.
Dr. Fleming, actually that was me in North Charleston. It was an Abbeville Institute conference in October 2020, still in the heat of Rona hysteria. I had had about all I could take, and was attempting to suppress the urge to tell everyone what they could do with their face diapers.
A case might be made against drug laws, but I have never found the alcohol and Prohibition angle to be very convincing. Every substance comprises a unique set of properties that distinguish it from all others and so it may be valid to regulate them differently based on the properties that set them apart. No matter how many similarities they share, a bobcat is not a cougar, a Ford F150 is not a tractor trailer, and a bolt action .308 rifle is not an M60 machine gun. Each of these pairs might even be considered identical at some very base level, but the dissimilarities make a world of difference.
Mr. Doggrell, to invoke Owen Wister’s Virginian: I was smiling when I implied those characteristics to anyone who is considering legalizing drugs. The solutions are much more complex than a guard rail analogy; I look forward to the evening we have this conversation over a whisky of some sort.
Josh, I was pulling your leg. My solution to the Covid Crackdown was to go nowhere but outside. Here in Illinois it was worse thatn SC, but at some point–as in Charleston–you had to get to your table in a bar or restaurant and then could take off the mask.
” We have this inherited theoretical Puritanism that won’t allow any acceptance that we live in a fallen world and utterly rejects any compromise with our fallen state. It’s the same destructive effect spiritual pride has on our individual souls, only at a polis level.” This is a very good formulation of a dominant trend in our society, Mr. Smith.
I have known a great many drunks and drug addicts in my day and they all have primarily been sugar (the most addictive substance known to man) addicts. We live in a society of extreme sugar addiction leading many to seek greater highs or the help of prescription drugs to deal with the physiological and psychic rollercoaster causing manic behavior and worse. Being socially acceptable, people are outraged that anyone would not join them in their addiction, which they are completely incapable of seeing as such, and can nurture extreme grudges against those who don’t join in, just like hard drug addicts. There are people in my life who, knowing that I always politely refuse to indulge, constantly seek to cajole or compel, guilt or threaten me to get me to join in. In other circles such people are deemed as pushers, a very low category in the drug world, but at the church coffee hour this is merely (abusive) hospitality. I’m strong enough to withstand all of this nonsense. What I resent is the fact that the Federal government subsidizes the sugar industry, whether it be cane, beet or corn, to a very large degree thus making sugar unnaturally cheap. Mechanization had already made sugar much cheaper than it had been historically when its consumption was reserved for the rich (the Russian aristocracy was proud of its rotten teeth) or for holiday treats. This subsidization, I believe, has had a greatly negative effect on our society leading to greater addictions and the infantilization and destablilization of the character of a great many if not the majority in our society. I think that those who make fed policy know what they are doing. The effects of high sugar consumption on physical and mental health have been know for a very long time, even before scientific study. Unstable people are easy to manipulate. I believe that it is an essential element in creating anarcho-tyranny and an element of Huxley’s notions of mass control. I am not advocating for the criminaliztion of sugar consumption or production. I’m sure that there are some here who will have thought that I have been writing tongue-in-cheek or who have smirked their way through it, but I think that massive sugar consumption is an essential element of the addiction crisis. Taking away the ability to buy this garbage with an EBT card has been a great step in the right direction, one that I think will be rescinded with the next administration under “industry” pressure. Another great step would be to remove the subsidies from the sugar industry, indeed from all agricultural production. I’m not holding my breath.
Removing the sugar subsidy would have no effect. The simple truth is that sugar cane cannot be grown profitably in the US. The Frenchman (from Illinois, I believe) who introduced sugar production in French Louisiana learned the difficult art of refiing from Caribbean technicians, but it was difficult. As they say, sugar cane requires 13 months of sunshine. So the Frenchman persuaded the French governor (I dimly remember it was his own father-in-law) to tax imported sugar.
By the way, this price support explains the successful presidential campaign of General Zachary Taylor, who ran as a Whig. As a Southern planter and slave-owner and war hero, he got the Southern vote but as a sugar planter, he supported tariffs, which endeared him to Northern Whig protectionists.
Removing tariffs and subsidies would only mean American sugar farmers and producers would lose out to cheaper imports. Blaming sugar cane growers for the American addiction would be like blaming brewers for making beer or ladies of the evening for plying their trade. The Italians have all the sugar they could want, but their excellent desserts are nowhere near as sweet as ours and their sugar consumption is lower. In fact western and central Europe has generally lower levels of sugar consumption. Like smoking dope and eating fast food, gobbling sugar is a symptom of a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emptiness.
I can’t argue with your conclusions. I didn’t mean to imply that removing subsidies would end sugar consumption or solve the addiction crisis, but, like with abortion, I resent extremely being forced to be complicit in their crimes. The subsidies are not restricted to cane production but also to the production of sugar beets, which, I understand, accounts for something over half of the production of crystalline sugar in the U.S., and corn syrup, which appears to be even more addictive than other sugars and far worse for the health. If sugar were a vital and important war materiel I might understand its subsidization, but it is junk and totally unnecessary for human health, in fact, quite the opposite. It is only good for alcohol production, which does have a vital medicinal and preservative function and, sometimes for food preservation, but there are better and more healthy ways of preserving food.
My experience with Europeans, at least for the last twenty years has been with Central/Eastern and Southeastern Europeans who have immigrated to the U.S. I find that they get as much sugar as they can. They often chose fancier deserts, but don’t discriminate much and suffer from obesity, cancer, heart disease and diabetes, all related to sugar consumption at shocking rates, much like our native population. In Central/Eastern Europe the region was awash, at times, with cheap sugar during the Bolshevik period. Sugar beet production, like most agriculture, was controlled by the government and a great deal of Cuban sugar was imported to prop up the Cuban Bolsheviks and to give people the illusion of luxury.
The Italians that I know here, almost exclusively Southern Italians, have a very great affinity for very sweet things.
I don’t pretend to have any real solutions, but if I were in a position to advise young parents I would encourage them to do the hard work of keeping their kids off the junk and feeding them whole foods, especially whole fat dairy, abundant animal fats, organ meats, lacto-fermented vegetables and plenty of greens, especially the bitter ones. It would make their kids calmer and more psychically stable, more intelligent and easier to teach.
When I was a kid my parents didn’t let me eat a lot of sweets and would stop me if they thought I was eating too much. I believe that was a common practice back then. They didn’t keep a lot around and I got a soft drink about once a week at most if I was lucky and that was usually in the summer when we kids felt like walking to the nearest store. I certainly agree about corn syrup. It really is much worse. I don’t know why that is, but when I was working at night and drinking Pepsi for the caffeine, I always felt better after switching from corn syrup sweetened Pepsi to the sugar or stevia sweetened versions. When either one ran out in the machines and I switched back, I would feel worse again. That was on just one twenty ounce Pepsi per night. The diet Pepsi with aspertame was much worse.