For an intelligent bloke you're surprisingly capable of posting some remarkable gob smacking ideas with respect to drugs. I nearly spat my pineapple ice mix drink on the laptop screen in Kao Lak: If it's not marxists it's the 60'sMugwump wrote:Last week .I sat in a bar in Oxford and watched a fellow organize a line of white powder on the table and then snort it, in full public view. This is how much fear of the law there is surrounding drug use, and this is why we have so many innocent lives smashed by this modern curse.
The only way - the only way - to reduce the harm from drugs is to enforce the law against their trafficking, sale, possession, and use. We have had sixty years of progressive legitimization and glamorization of drug use in the media, and increasing tolerance of drugs by law enforcement. The wages of this have been ruined lives, children reared in horrifying and almost insurmountable circumstances, and a vast and destructive criminal industry. Drugs were not common until the 1960s. Why then are they so common today ? Did people suddenly acquire a new susceptibility ? Or rather, were they made to seem normal and cool by music, the media and by lax laws and enforcement ?
Like everyone on here, I do not want my children criminalized for smoking a joint. But actually, that's a risk I would be prepared to take if it meant that they were unlikely to be exposed to drugs because drugs were made very rare again, as they once were. Today, all our kids are routinely exposed to hard drugs because the people who distribute and consume them feel safe in doing so. My children do not, as far as I can tell, take them, but if they do not it is because their genetics and upbringing predispose them not to. Many more vulnerable people are less likely to have those resources, and so the disadvantage and spoilage cascades down the lost generations.
we opened Pandora's little box of weed and white powder in the 1960s. It will be very difficult to close it again, but we must try before mind-altering drugs become as endemic as that other social wrecker, alcohol. Once a drug is embedded as deeply as ethanol is, there really is no turning back. i don't think drug tests for those on welfare are necessarily the answer, but as one more way of exerting pressure to avoid drug-taking and remain fit for work, it's defensible.
1. The war on drugs does not work
2. The war on drugs is part of policing
3. Drug use will subside when we decriminalize it & in some cases legalise it
3. We can save millions if not sqillions by removing the criminal element hence decriminalize & legalise but do not condone
4. (see the Portuguese model)
5. Allow legalisation of marijuana & get the government to grow, supply & tax the product (again do not condone it's use)
6. There is an incredibly serious lack of rehab & detox services - allocate & target money there
7. There is a serious lack of resources in education re drugs - allocate accordingly
8. Safe injecting rooms need to to be put in most places
9. Tax & regulate drug use, get the criminal element out of it & see our law enforcement resources tackle law enforcement and not need to deal with social / health issues.
If we go down the prosecute way then good luck building new prisons, finding new police officers etc.
Doing more of the same does not work doing more of the same but even applying more harshly make one feel good but is is as useful as a fish is to riding bicycles.
Although I'm stumped on methamphetamines ATM
The President of the Philippines might be wanting your number
If you're thinking Singapore then remember that tiny piece of land is just that: tiny with a small population - let alone other issues which is for a separate place
The drug testing of welfare recipients is both:
a) on a broader scale is merely victim blaming bullshit and part of populist & in some instances class warfare.(there are less jobs than there are people seeking those jobs) and
b) on a local scale I hope they nail the little drug using shits & wasters of time, energy & resources some of whom would sell their grandmothers for the next hit
This of course doesn't enter the territory of alcohol & prescription drugs, that is another although related story.
