The Crack-whore Conundrum or Moving Towards Fixing the Global Drugs Crisis
Is a full on 90s Crack-whore, say 1998 trying to survive the worst in the worst part of a very different New York City, does this person have worth?
Should this person be simply killed?
Not only is there worth in this persons continued existence, there is a huge financial burden levied on society by them breathing their next breath.
Fortunately the answer is easier than you might imagine and can be designed to morph as need dictates a change.
What gets people to take that first hit? Their place in society both physical and mental is the reason often associated with an un-diagnosed mental condition thrown in the mix. If within the resulting concoction which forms this person's view of reality and the answer to "am I ok?" is "no I am not." the first drink or toke will easily enter into their life quickly and as often as needed.
If you want to get junkies or the 90s Crack-whore off the streets and out of the communities, the houses, top of the line or barely standing hovels, you need to attack the root of the problem. The thing that gets us taking that first reality altering substance, alcohol, cigarettes, and all our other drugs is not feeling "ok" enough to go against parental, and authority horror stories, societal presentations from "duh, just say no." to "you're hurting Jesus by doing that devil weed!" And most importantly they are so not ok they are going against the knowledge that drugs can kill you. They are going against their need to take that next breath. Why?
That is the question that no one seems to be able to figure out.
Why?
Because I am not ok!
Short, simple. Why risk death, why steal, lie, cheat, sell yourself or others, even your children, why make Jesus cry? Because they are not ok.
Why does kid A (excellent album) who doesn't take drugs not take drugs? Fear, hell no! It is feeling ok enough to see that it is not good for you. Being ok enough with themselves that the need to alter reality is suppressed. As for kid B through infinity do them because something is not ok. They were physically, sexually, societally, genederly (I don't think that is a word, I mean inequality based on gender), the list goes on probably not to infinity but at least to the range of 7,000,000,000 plus, mistreated, put down, and generally not in charge of their own lives. Not ok.
Whether chemically predisposed but undiagnosed and ignorantly not searched for, or they simply had enough, mentally switched of survive at all costs mode and rolled the dice.
Abstinence doesn't work, saying no to anything only increases the likelihood of doing said act. One of the big tobacco conglomerates, subsidized and legally poisoning societies around the World intentionally realized that putting up signs saying "no smoking" made people want to smoke. So a fair percentage of those signs you see everywhere are put up by them. So put frankly the best way to get someone to do something is to say not to do it. "duh, say no to drugs." Actually increased drug usage. I used to love to party with my SNTD t-shirt happily covering my torso.
The war on drugs another "duh, me fight me kill!" idiotic mentality has cost one trillion dollars as of 2012 in the United States no telling the global cost and there have been zero results. If people were just ok, the string of "Pablo Escobars" of the world wouldn't have and wouldn't exist. PE was said to make so much money he spent $27,000 a month on rubber bands to put his cash in tidy stacks. That was at the peak of a push against his like and don't forget Mr. "I am not a crook!" himself put the "war on drugs" in place. It has been a disaster and it is time to raise the white flag and admit defeat.
Making drugs illegal in the first place was an idiot move. It was a knee jerk reaction that has never relaxed. Chronic drug abusers are screaming to the World that they are not ok! So what does a "good" and let's not forget "christian" society do when it sees very plainly that this situation isn't working it increases punishment, says "no" louder and doesn't combat the problem in an ethical, moral or just way.
"Incarcerate them and change their mind" when all the abuser was doing, is doing, is just looking for a little escape they are morphed into a forcibly animalistic mostly ex-person who now thrives in the savagery of lockup. Of course drugs are everywhere in jails and the root cause isn't treated in any way, shape or form it is only amplified by the caustic, torturous and barbaric treatment they are thrust into. When they get out of the prison factory system there life is long since over and they will never find acceptance or kindness on the outside in the Christian world of "God is the only judge" where instead not only are men and a few woman judging people once the inhumanly treated individual gets out, society as a whole sees them as nothing and very much unemployable.
So you got no money and nowhere, no friends other than any criminals they can gain acceptance with because they sure as hell aren't landing on Park Ave. Humans thrive on acceptance and the only place a pariah can get what they need is a deep scrape of the barrel floor. Of course this begets a higher probability that the "am I ok?" answer remains very much "no", which begets further and deepening depression, begetting increased drug use, then crime cause all the drug war has done is increasing the street value a bit.
In 1978 you could get a joint for a buck, now a "pinner" a skinny little joint will set you back 5. Of course what you could buy for a buck in '79 not only its potency has increased but it's power is miles ahead.
Qualitatively a one buck joint would get 3 people high once. Currently I am aware of a person buying that $5 joint, legally (small miracles), and it lasting him 3 days.
Should this same person be behind bars for getting a little relaxation and a little peace in his life?
The smart money is on a resounding "hell no!" If you look at that as bad or in any way amoral or unethical you need to see every "Joe 6-pack" as equally unfit to be in society. There is a reason that "he" needs his 6-pack and absolutely none of it is good or healthy for "him" or anyone within about 50 miles.
Knock back a few cold ones on a hot day and you are 100x more likely to injure someone around you. ETOH numbs your reason center and the most responsible person with 3 drinks in them (very often him) becomes an idiot behind the wheel. Whether driving home from the finest restaurants to a 7-11 for a burrito. It makes you incompetent and incapable of thinking with any level of clarity.
Yes, pot also makes you stupid at least temporarily with no evidence (though I am living proof) unlike alcohol that pot destroys your brain in any way. Added to this marihuana doesn't nullify your drive to protect yourself anywhere near as profoundly as alcohol does as it puts you in a state of not give a shit about the lives around you.
Psychology as with everything exists in a state of flux. What is ok now a couple of years ago would have been seen as witchcraft and what was done 50 years ago is currently looked upon as mass insanity. John F. Kennedy's sister had a piece of her brain removed threw her eye-socket or nose with a metal hook used to remove and destroy her cerebral tissue, the height of therapeutic technology that short distance in our past for mental problems.
The way the addict should be treated by a conscience society would be to evaluate them medically and psychologically and begin a treatment pattern. A direction to move towards so they can move forward. And negate the incarceration cost and need. If you look at nearly all crime there is a drug component in it's need.
A drunk driver seems obvious but it is the need to become inebriated in the first place that is the problem and is an overlooked concern. The ingestion into a system again especially prevalent in alcohol's affect on the brain not only it's reduction in fear towards life and limb and consequences (law) but it's inability to even observe potential problems or negative outcomes. It switches off all that keeps people ok within a society in general.
If you put a drunk driver in jail and throw away the key then he should be able to sue the government for legally allowing the situation to occur in the first place.
To the drunk mind anything goes, anything! Raping, driving over people, shooting, stabbing, assaulting, and physically and psychologically scaring people. Why can't I sue the booze company or the government for allowing complete availability of quantity and quality of alcohol that results in me getting hit in my bed as a drunk drives into my house just after the bars close?
Addictiveness of drugs (again all) could well be reduced.
Opiods are a perfect example here. Opiods have been cultivated for eons. The only reason Opiods are addictive is because an addictive drug is a profitable drug and society hasn't forced the development of a non-addictive replacement. No perceived profit in changing what for all intents and purposes works just fine as reasonably prescribed.
So you are in your bed its 2:15 in the a.m. and in the safety of your bed you are woken by some freakin' genius who was on the way home from the pharmacy from picking up his medicine, sorry I mean bar, the bar closed at 2, and it took him 5 minutes to find his car in the empty parking lot where he legally purchased until inebriation placed him a few minutes later in your bedroom.
This results in a trip to an ER and your first taste. Morphine. A great drug medically! Unfortunately the side effects which help to make you not care about your acute pain so much comes with an amazing, incredible euphoria so high as a kite the paramedics or Doctors work to take your pain away.
A high spoken of as prolonged waves of orgasm within the warm safety of your mother's womb.
Gee why do people abuse this class of drug?!
So you went from safe and asleep to excruciating pain, to your mom's womb in minutes if you are close enough to a capable paramedic or ER.
Now, when this wears off and the pain returns not only will the medics or docs be fighting the pain you have woken back into, but also the effects of the pain felt before relived in your very capable mind as a "something to watch out for".
So from ER, whether "healed" or not, a continuation of Opiods continues out of need. Pain absolutely sucks physically, mentally, physiologically it can be terminal and psychologically and needs to be managed as well as possible.
This can lead in a lot of different directions, one of which is pain/chemical related dependence, which basically is it hurts and getting hit by a car can be lifelong.
So, it hurts and you go "running for the shelter of mothers little helper", in this case Opiods. Opiods are chemically (sorry I don't remember the compound that is addictive in Humans found in the poppy based wonder drug) and psychologically addictive, psychologically because feeling good is much better than not feeling good.
So not only are you combating your physical pain but also the psychological effects from a reduction of prior mobility, the label of wounded and it's negative "less than" connotations, the loss of safety in going from sawing freakin logs just past 2, safe and sound in bed to knowing that all that is gone, what was is no more but may be returned to, fingers crossed.
Depression, anxiety, and the stress from the life-change you've encountered will push you towards taking more "little helpers" to not just reduce your pain, but more importantly to mask the emotional pain that has resulted. Guess what that good feeling is strongly, chemically addictive. So due to your pain and psychological issues real or not, you have become addicted and physically you are locked in to the next fix.
At this point psychological help is what you need as you are weaned off the chemical addiction, but such logical steps have never been implemented.
So a good night's sleep devolves into a drug quickly becoming more important than anything else.
And through no fault of your own and from an well intentioned Medical staff whose unfortunate bottom financial line is highest on the list of priorities and from a pharmaceutical industry where more addictive means more $, you have become a statistic.
Should you be incarcerated? You are breaking the law either by taking a prescription as other than intended, to conning a well meaning but overworked Doctor or by going to your local pusher made wealthy by your need.
Criminalizing your pain is where the true immorality lies. I have already shown you where putting a drug offender into the penal system leads them. Opiods as an example of the many strongly addictive drugs bring about such physical discomfort when you stop that the straightest alive will suck a strangers penis to get high, and a woman will do the ultimate dehumanizing act and allow the worst society has produced to paw at them in whatever way they want.
Incarceration is not the answer. The answer is to address the help their actions are crying out for.
Rush Limbaugh the festering boil on the ass of humanity, he is and has long been. Well happy go lucky, mister nice guy, had the physical manifestation of the pain he causes me. He had a pain in his gargantuan neck.
So this idiot and his completely undeserved notoriety, wealth and self-touted intelligence, let's face it if he didn't say it no one would. He, as far as was released didn't have to resort to sucking dick though it is impossible and I like to hope he did, not at all in a homosexual way for I don't want to think of him enjoying it. See this again, self-touted "moral rock", firstly he had cold hard cash which open most doors and legs, added to this he possesses master level manipulation drive, honed insidiously by infecting those stupid enough to tune him in. See, he lied again and again and again to multiple educated Doctors fooling them into believing his lies being a trained professional he very much still is.
A dealer though by profession a bottom feeder is just as much a result of a broken system as the addicts and users they serve. No kid on "what I want to be day" says "I want to increase the misery of the unfortunates around me by using drugs as power. The legalization of pot in the great state of California has relieved unbelievable stress in the lives of normal citizens who just prefer to smoke a little plant instead of drink a little booze. And how many bottom feeders has it removed? I would say somewhere between one, for a little positive change is good change to, well all of them. It has taken a whole swathe of crime from life in Cali and hopefully it is a step more will take.
Added to this decriminalizing pot has improved the psychological well being of the user who got if he got busted prior would be dumped into and flushed out of the profoundly broken penal system and takes on a Typhoid Mary persona societally, they may as well be locked up for life or killed outright!
Right?
Ask anyone top to bottom if a death penalty reduces crime and they will say an emphatic "NO!"
All it does is glamorize the situation in media making status seekers more likely to commit to get fame, and it increases the likelihood of instead of just robbing someone to get your $/fix you will kill them to try reduce your connection to the crime. The difference between threatening lethal force to get what you want using the lethal force is extremely narrow.
Our concept of incarceration is the same as it was since way, long before the BC/AD switch over.
Trying to threaten with punishment is amoral and profoundly archaic. What you are saying is the same thing as your great-great-great-g...great grand parents thought. "Put man in box he no do bad!"
Look at your own life. if your parents said don't hang out with Timmy the first thing you did was go see Timmy, lying and cheating as you go. When you get caught for you are a child and only have a few years of TV and peer training and don't know anything near the level of deceit your parents are masters of.
So saying "Duh, drug users and providers should die!" Will not stop someone willing to suck a dick for and knowing that if caught will be physically, sexually, emotionally and in so many other ways tortured for X amount of their short life has done so far. Crap, it hasn't worked since we could only communicate with hand signals our unhappiness.
How to at least begin to reduce the problem with drugs is to look at it first as a problem that isn't a mountain and insurmountable, something like a child would declare war on it.
Literally people are killed every second because of this problem. If we can begin to work on a society wide psychological level and attempt to reduce the need for the drug in the first place is the first of many Band-Aids. This is not easy in any way. Look at the drug nicotine I have been addicted since my early teens to this legally, chemically enhanced to increase it's physical dependence, drug.
Quit for up to 4 years once but it is always sitting in the back of my brain, a scratch unitched. If I am off it the next big problem might be the one that pushes me back over the edge and something always does.
Medically I absolutely know how toxic it is below the cellular level. I KNOW it in some way WILL kill me, but eventually the next hit is taken and I am back on.
I have experimented with and consumed a wide variety of drugs and illicit substances, I am not saying this to get a crown or to increase my good or bad press, I am saying this as a fact of my life. Dad, uncles gave me drinks of beer before I could ambulate well, my brother gave me my first hit of pot when I was either 8 or 9, I am understandable a little foggy. Roberto and I shared my first cigarette on top of the dodge ball locker in my elementary school. And all shifted from one hopeful answer to another. Alcohol I didn't like and would steal booze from my dad's ample booze closet and hold my nose to get it down. I also don't like feeling stupid and avoid it as a general rule. The most attractive this far is legal in a few countries worldwide, has had a reduced legality in many others is legal medically (and cannabis has had amazing results on relieving discomfort on a variety of ailments) in a number of US states and even recreationally available in less than a hand full of progressive and forward thinking others.
A code that I have tried to implement as close to a constant as I can, is the words accredited to the late and great Albert Einstein and I am paraphrasing here but how I see it is that doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results a different outcome, is the embodiment of stupidity.
Portugal is a great example of how to rearrange a society in a much more caring and inclusive government in the small Western European nation. They went from having the highest rate of drug related deaths in the entirety of the continent of Europe to having 3 annually in less than 15 short years. Yes, I am using a "Western" example but what they did was revolutionary and a fantastic set of shoulders on which to stand and see what could comes next.
They, again in a nutshell, please read more or watch a video on the subject.
See what they did is absolutely contra "normality", they legalized all drugs. You will not be punished if you have a 10 or less day supply of nearly anything. Heroin, you can walk down the street in possession of an ample 10 days worth.
Unbe-freakin-levable!
But, it is much more groundbreaking and intelligent than that. They saw drug usage as fitting into two categories those speaking enhanced pleasure and those medically and psychologically needing to take who basically are in a cry for help situation.
As throughout a good chunk of the world they saw alcohol as relatively ok, so in their very open eyed view they realized having a little of this or that isn't really any more or less harmful than a goblet of grog. Especially if you could clinically produce the drug, increasing accuracy of dosage and reducing overdoses.
Added to this loveliness, they increased education at all levels of the reality of drugs, burning the so stupid it is funny "horror" flick, "Refer Madness" and replaced it with the honest cost of becoming inebriated.
They initiated with complete coverage free needle exchanges and halved the number of new HIV cases again in less than 15 years making it safer for those just really going only a little harder than booze.
As for the second category, the unfortunate people who are so in need of feeling ok they put themselves and those around them and society as a whole down.
They de-stigmatized the entire concept of drugs as a black and white issue. They did this with their pretty "intelligently designed" education program. They made the problem not something to hide and be shunned for but be seen as a need for help. And that a positive push towards getting the person you love the help they need is the Human and Humane way to go.
To enhance this they used the money they had for years used to walk into the drug war wall again and again and funneled it into providing the psychological support and treatment the chronic need. And so making them ok.
As part of the Education they also de-stigmatized the concept of mental illness as an evil, and a weakness to be feared and hid and showed that the people in this state are simply you with a different face. We all have our breaking points small and big and we in our beautiful brains seek simplicity and a state of at least ok.
Did it cost a lot? Initially the implementation and restructuring and training took money, time and recourses. But, I say loudly that if it is even a little over the $51,000,000,000 that the US spent on the totally unsuccessful "war on drugs" it is well worth it. As Portugal's, again Humane, program continues to dramatically decrease the cost both in Euros and in lives taken or effected by drugs. The prison population plummeted and drive towards programs designed to accept the ex-cons seeing them not as pariahs but having served their sentence and so are free to rejoin society. Programs such as reeducating business owners to utilize their abilities.
System wide medical costs especially ER and ICU visits have fallen dramatically.
Is Portugal's process stagnant?
By design no it isn't. They are trying to attack not just the problem with a knee jerk they saw the need to morph what works towards what works better and what doesn't it is evaluated to see if it can be figured out why the failure but it is discarded.
Think of what the financially powerful, though in a current decline due to a profound top end incompetence, the very top, a nation like the United States could accomplish amazing results!
The World could do the same. To see the needy as not afflicted but drowning is step one and all that follow, right or wrong if done with the intent of making a positive mark on the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans and possibly billions around the world.
There is some pretty old shrink jargon, to recognize that there is a problem is step one on the road to recovery. But what needs to be added to this is that if a misstep occurs, stop, re-evaluate and try another educated step forward.
So to see that there is a problem I believe everyone, everywhere is aware that drugs are a problem. Now it is time to take a better step, see if we can't ultimately get around this wall.
Is my idea the white of the yin and yang, black and white motif?
No, nothing is black and nothing is white, but it is a much better shade of gray than our current and long standing drugs policy!
Back to the poor, old pain in the neck being and having Rush, he avoided the criminal system designed to keep us in line completely. His felony, let's face it a huge strike against him that should have brought him to getting raped in prison per penal code, his legal team, well paid by not just the portly professor of lies and hate but by some of his idiotic minions to strike back against the lefts smear of their pillar. The team of people who let's face it are paid to take an obviously culpable, obviously guilty scum, criminal, legally speaking, and see if they can manipulate a jury or judge that no they are not bad that they should go free. This team of winners bargained down all of it to not firstly admitting to no criminal offense and so his manipulation and lies continue vindicated, "see it was a plot I am not guilty!" and the continuation of the resort treatment center very similar to the one old cum into plants Weinstein would be jealous of.
Money and fame, deserved or in his case not buys huge privilege in a World where that instead of intelligence and integrity are king and god.
All I am suggesting is leveling the playing field a little and giving us all a little fairer shake. And yes sympathy.
A chronic drug abuser, whether addicted yet or not is saying very loudly that they are so unhappy they happily risk death from an overdose or from the violence that obtaining a fix brings. They risk incarceration and the rape, violence and torture prevalent in our and all penal systems and the fact that means they have thrown their lives away because the future closes with the closing of the cell bars.
They are not criminals they are needy, where are our hearts? Our brains? Easy stuck in Einstein's loop just walking into the wall again and again gaining zero insight.
These people are not just figuratively, but physically our family. Give a shit and not a stone and let's see what can be accomplished with intelligence and not eons old accepted stupidity.
Robert Peters
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TLDR
Brevity, the soul of wit!
What the unholy fuckity-fucking fuck-fuck was THAT? I got maybe two paragraphs into it and felt my brain start to melt. My phone is now having some sort of strange seizure fit from having to scroll so far down to get to the comment section. There should be some sort of warning label at the beginning of that OP.
It must be daunting to possess a brain incapable of going beyond 2 paragraphs before a brain fart occurs. Good luck on gaining any education and growing your intelligence with such a profound limitation.
Sorry let me shorten it for you.
Drugs bad, me have idea on how to help problem. Treat people well. And be good to them.
Fortunately the bible and other "holy" books are available in small bite sized pieces for just such a limited brain.
Good luck on trying to figure anything out and come to conclusions on anything longer than a sound bite.
@wgus Re: "It must be daunting to possess a brain incapable of going beyond 2 paragraphs before a brain fart occurs."
Holy shit, dude, that was actually pretty good. LMAO With that attitude you should fit right in at this place. *chuckle* Welcome aboard the good ship AR. Give me a bit to stop laughing, and I will try to comment more later.
@wgus Re: The whole "two paragraphs" comments
Okay, now that my laughter has subsided a bit (plus I had a bunch of yard work to do today), I've finally settled in for the evening. In all honesty, I still didn't go past two paragraphs in the OP. Scanned a bit here and there throughout, though, just to get the general idea. Plus read the responses of others. It is obvious you put a great deal of time and effort and thought into the OP, and the topic is actually a legitimate item of concern. I dealt with the drug problem for twenty years on the city streets, and I have seen first-hand the devastating effects it has on individuals, families, and communities as a whole. And if somewhere in that "thesis" you wrote you are suggesting the "judicial system" (in America) is broken in how it deals with these matters (and others), then you certainly will not be getting any argument from me about it. Sadly, I am all-too-familiar with how horribly ineffective the court and legal system has become. The punishments rarely (if ever) fit the crimes. And what few "rehab" programs might be in place here and there are most often token efforts, at best.
So, while I appreciate the time and effort it took for you to compose your OP, I have to agree with the others and suggest writings of that length are better suited for a different platform. On this site, most folks get on here during whatever few spare moments they have throughout the day, meaning they do not always have time to read a novel in a debate forum. I happen to be one of those folks. I also happen to love reading. But if I want to read "War and Peace", then I will go buy the book and enjoy it in the comfort of my reading room in the evenings, not while sitting at my kitchen table on my phone while having my morning coffee. Oh, and just so you know, I am still chuckling to myself about your brain fart comment. Damn that was funny. Good one.
I agree with you as to it's length. Especially in retrospect. But what I was attempting in so many words was not just to say x,y,and z are correct I was attempting to show you/the reader why I think what I think and where the hypothesis found it's solidity.
What I am trying to do within my writing is to show that the world and everything in or around it isn't black and white. If I said the criminal system is broken and you don't agree all I say is immediately black, wrong. If is say it is broken because of 1,2,3 then if you can instead of taken my idea as black and white and show the human toll and by including the psychological fact that if I put you in a box you suffer. But if you are waterboarded and have other means of torture real and perceived that you actually are putting the victim in a physiologic state of well being I am saying not only that what you are doing is counter productive to your goal of harming, but that by causing harm you are forcing their hand to recommit.
Facts are not facts. If I say the moon is 250,000 miles away from the earth it is a fact. But the knowledge that it's path isn't solid makes that fact false. Coupled with this each millisecond it is moving farther away isn't a fact. Even if you say it is x miles x feet and x inches by the time you tell that it is no longer true.
So drugs are bad, religion is bad, war is bad are all as much facts as they are false. If I never had a bad experience with any of them they are good.
All is gray, I was just trying to explain my gray.
Good luck with the cerebral gas expulsions. I will try to keep it shorter in the future, but I can't promise.
Tin-man thanks for not taking my crass comment as the joke it was intended to be and not taking it as an attack it wasn't. I was not saying you are stupid at all I was just trying to point out that sometimes, unfortunately you can't get the just of an argument by only getting a thumbnail sketch.
I am happy my attempt to hit at your funny bone worked.
Sorry about causing your brain to break wind.
@wgus
No worries, dude. My brain breaks wind so much nowadays my wife keeps a can of deodorizer handy at all times. lol
I probably broadly agree with the OP.
Could you give us a synopsis? A pithy humorous one would be nice..
Life, real life doesn't come in sound bites. One needs to read, sorry a whole couple of pages, and try to understand what the author is saying and why they are saying what they are saying.
Fortunately for people like you incapable of going beyond a few lines or minutes of time in order to make change there is a huge group setup just for you.
MAGA shorter than a sound bite. Make America Great Again.
There is something you can easily get behind.
Things bad, me want better!
The OP basically says rehabilitation is superior to criminalization.
Yes in a nut shell. Thanks.
Nothing is black and white!
Should we condemn and criminalise or treat and rehabilitate?
The latter.
@wgusapukc:
You're quite right. Unfortunately in most Western countries law-making processes are still tied to the thuggish bronze age morality of the Old Testament. If a pharmaceutical company developed a safe, non-addictive drug that gave people a little taste of happiness, the hypocrites would still want to ban it.
The production cost of drugs is minimal. All of the added value that makes drug pushers rich comes from prohibition. So people who become addicted face financial ruin and total degradation. They also turn to crime to fuel their habit. Even worse, because drugs are illegal, production can't be regulated. So nobody knows what's in the little bag of stuff they bought. Maybe it'll take away their pain. Maybe it'll make them run amok and kill people. Maybe it'll kill them. So we've got people swallowing, smoking, or injecting stuff produced by criminals and idiots in the most unhygienic conditions imaginable.
In addition to the vast cost of the futile war on drugs, this situation is also causing massive overload in healthcare costs. People are getting O/Ds by taking haphazardly produced drugs. They're getting diseases from needles or from prostitution. Drug prohibition is also responsible for a lot of other crime by desperate addicts.
Just about everyone uses some form of drugs. I think we always have, right back to the first ape to get high on fermented fruit. I think it's time to grow up and acknowledge this, so we can start to make happiness medication a little safer for people and society.
I'd like to see all of the resources wasted on the war on drugs diverted into an effective international war on people smuggling and modern slavery.
I somewhat agree with your first line but instead I would say that ALL countries punishment processes are archaic and well beyond new or old testament. But just like you being here against the religious ideals that are so pervasive you are saying that the norm is wrong. By being here you are trying to rub elbows peers. By saying yes but the norm is different you put up a wall that says "this problem is insurmountable. Portugal is a Western nation and they 18 years ago went against the norm and implemented change. What I am saying is the problem is with the norm and a new path must be followed. Are voters and so people stupid? Are the most devout religious figures stupid. Absolutely not. See the problems is with facts and the pervasiveness of against change. If I say to you god will strike you down if x,y and z happens you will laugh but the fact that god will do this to the person saying it is a fact. 100%. It is also absolutely not wrong. Everyone's facts are different than everyone elses. What is a fact something that can be proven to someone as correct. More or less. But facts are subjective. There is no black and white. So our concept of fact is totally fluid. If I say that a super massive black hole is at the center of the Milky-way it to me is a fact but it is absolutely not a fact. To say there is one is conjecture and based on available evidence all of which changes with each new hypothesis and data set.
As for black and white it is our attempt to make life easier as all systems move towards the ease to those involved in the system.
War is bad! Black and white but no without World War 1 the airplane would have taken decades to achieve what took place in a few bloody years. So though death and hate are bad there are always variations of gray.
I also agree that everyone uses but having a beer to blow off a little steam is relative to the person's tolerance but to are to the point where you need to go against all of society, family and your own drive to live to get off you are not just trying to hide from your problems but you are raising a white flag, high and clear, and taking the plunge. These people need help and no one gives a shit.
I am pro-drugs not because I think everyone should take them, nothing near. But to make them illegal out of fear with no thought of the positive side of drugs is to say blindly that all is black and white.
The people smuggling and modern slavery in a huge way is drug related and very much, again, not seeing every individual for the possibilities of what they can do.
You said you had/have problems with substance abuse and I am sorry for that. But it wasn't the availibility of ETOH that is your problem it is that you needed it so much that it took over your consciousness and became a need. It is not alcohols fault and alcohol isn't bad but for you the fact that you had/have a problem with it makes you want to try and protect others from your plight. If however you were raised in a society where your individual positives, negatives and differences were taken into account you may well started.
What I am suggesting is a top down change in not just laws but a change in looking at you as an admitted alcoholic not as a problem, a bad person, a failure but as someone just like me who needed to attack your world via booze. Attack what made and makes you not OK.
To go one step further as an alcoholic I am sure you avoid ETOH at all costs because you were told that a single sip could put you back into your overt waving of the flag. Addiction like everything doesn't work that way. It, again is not black and white. Now the fear to not do it is a good survival tool and I am sure has served you well but If you get to the point where a cork being removed is all encompassing it is not due to the addiction but because you know that intoxication stops the pain. This is as it was earlier in your life is a sign that you need help. That you are incapable of handling whatever has put you in that place. As a good/bad society if you say I got drunk last weekend everyone will congratulate. If you say I got drunk last weekend because I am an alcoholic they will instead look upon you as someone not only "broken" unable to do what everyone else does but so weak that wine or a beer is in control of your life. It isn't it is your life that is in control of the beer. Coupled with this if ETOH was again illegal as in the 20s in the US every step in your addiction would be a possible step towards prison. So if I use pot to quell what ails me instead of a bottle why should I have to not only face incarceration but also have to deal with the uncertainty and violence that is a part of getting your hands on something illegal.
Drugs have given society some wonderful art, music and literature (movies/tv) so to say that heroin is bad because of it's potential legality is to negate all the positives and illumination that the drug has given.
I want to very much say you are not bad or anything near broken due to your ETOH troubles and I hope you are getting and continue to get the help you need to keep it from reentering you life.
Again to say that society is religious is to negate everyone that doesn't have an imaginary friend or friends. It is also to say it is black and white. Religion like everything is not black and white. Have millions died and tons more been put under the lash? Fuck yes, but all religion is is an attempt to give order and solidity to your life just like ardently not believing. God, science, art and opinions are facts to us and we live by them. But what is most important is to see that every fact is as right as it is wrong for perceiving it is what makes it a fact.
Thanks
@wgusapukc: You said you had/have problems with substance abuse and I am sorry for that. But it wasn't the availibility of ETOH that is your problem it is that you needed it so much that it took over your consciousness and became a need.
Just a minute. You accused others of lacking the attention span to read your original post, but here you are misreading mine or confusing me with another poster. Nowhere did I say I had any kind of substance abuse problem. I'm a very occasional drinker of wine, scotch and brandy, and a regular drinker of caffeine. And that's it. There's no dependency or abuse problem.
@wgusapukc
1) You can curb that attitude if you want to last on this forum. You have just insulted people that have enormous IQs and that is an understatement.
2) The point here is that even though your post is somewhat interesting, no one comes here just to read. They come here to converse and exchange, converse.
3) I read your entire post but I had to set aside time to do it. Most of the time I am working while I am on this forum. So I don't expect to devote a large part of my concentration here. What you wrote IS important, but this forum is not really the place to write a novel. The OP-ED of a news blog is a better place. You weren't expecting any responses in the first place.
4) I understand your passion for your post but you mistakenly have put your ego before the issue. You didn't consider the format that you were writing in and insulting your prospective readers is not a good idea.
Now about your post. I generally agree. Care instead of punishment. Understanding over kneejerk reaction.
I take it that you are prodrugs. I am not. I think that you omitted a significant reason that many if not most people do illegal drugs in the first place. That reason being culture. You kind of touched on it when you describe the difference between being drunk and being high on pot. You were spot on. Drunks are dangerous and out of control. Potheads just don't give a fuck about anything. They are slackers. Those are wild generalizations but they ring true with a good many people. I don't like drunks and I am an alcoholic. I don't like slackers of any kind especially pothead slackers. There are many different kinds of slackers and certainly, all pot users are not slackers, but the culture of pot tends to favor slackers in general. I have learned through experience that the worst thing I want to hear from someone is "It's cool man". That usually means that that person has just screwed you somehow and they just don't give a fuck.
I don't like the conservative idea of criminalization. It doesn't serve any purpose unless you are a private prison on the government payroll.
So again I agree with your post in general.
Yes you are correct this isn't a op-ed site but it is a site I enjoy and I wanted to share my ideas with my peers.
As for the slight against the posters it was a combination of factors. Firstly I am tired of people not wanting to get the full story or concept of an idea and only seemingly capable of ingestion what might get a reaction. You show a war with fields of bodies and the people go oh. You show a baby sitting next to a dead mother it no longer maters why the mother died it only matters the "empathy" towards the baby. Added to this when I write I try to slip a little humor in to my work. I wasn't calling either an idiot I was simply commenting on the overload of information resulting in the aforementioned short attention span society and how the why and true costs fall by the way side. ie a concert where 500+ are shot and 59 die but if 1 kid dies doing something they also should be safe at then those 559+ individuals are given a fuck about.
My attack wasn't meant in a harmful way I was simply using psychology to force notice to be taken.
Thanks
I want to continue by addressing the statement about high IQs. It is important for you to understand that the fact that I have an IQ of x has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence or ability to make an intelligent argument or even to understand truths or facts. A savant with a 45 IQ could put not only you and all the others in this site to shame but possible in say maths is the smartest person to ever live (as far as maths go). An arbitrary number on a non-inclusive test designed to look for markers perceived to be important is nothing to be proud of nor is a 45 a cause for shame.
The late, great Steven Hawking was said to be the smartest man alive before passing. About cosmology I would say perhaps but tell me there isn't some 5 year old in Pango Pango that isn't smarter by a huge distance. So was Mr. Hawking intelligent? Yes, was he smarter than everyone in every way fuck no. I bet he has no idea of how to make Kim-chi worth a damn.
Intelligence is subjective remember he hadn't spoken for so long that if they could make his vocal cords work or his legs work he would have no idea of how to use them making any 2 year old smarter than him.
I am not belittling anyone here, "genius" or "idiot" we are not better than anyone, ANYONE around us.
Even if I was trolling by my hit, which I wasn't, you in all the intelligence you have were unable to see that I was saying people generally have brain farts beyond 2 paragraphs and at the same time I was saying we need to listen to people and do right by them even emotionally. So the "joke" you misconstrued as my indication that people had a low IQ shows that not only did you not read what I was clearly saying, even if long winded, but you took immediate offense. In my high IQ mind the "offensiveness" was a psychological attempt to get my mad enough to read on. Instead in your high IQ brain you immediately shut down. Not using intelligence but the knee-jerk reaction that my words were against within not only the stupid but the smart.
There are no facts and there is no black and white. High IQ or the scum of the earth all have the possibility of changing everything. It is your job to read opinions and not only plug them into your facts but to see what I say as fact and what you think as fact and that the only way we can live together is to see that both are indeed facts.
Try to not take a knee-jerk reaction and know you, Hawking and anyone else you hold in high regard are not only geniuses but are also complete morons as we all are. Each trying to have an easier life and to be "ok".
Good luck!!
@wgusapukc
Okay, pal.
It seems to me that you are embarking on reflecting on the whole world and solve it. In your effort, you want not just to focus our views on what you think we have missed( and you could be right about that) but also to chastise us for not sharing your proscribed powers of observation. Now you may not understand that we might agree with you in part but you can't expect a complete acceptance of everything you say.
Of course, You didn't even respond to my reply to your post after I had read it.
I understand that everyone has some capacity for genius or not and it doesn't matter. each person has value. So let's apply the same procedure to you as you have to me. Don't assume I am like what you describe.
Alright I made it through a few paragraphs but this is not a book you have to BS through and fill the pages. This is a forum, only use enough information to get your point across.
I have used drugs as well as sold them...
My hiccup is that there isn’t enough corporal punishment. To train people as well as animals (their the same) you tell them it’s wrong, then show them why it’s wrong, then spank them. You need the spanking so they have a psychological connection between pain and wrongness.
Simply read up on almost any religious text, it’ll teach you how to train and brainwash people.
The interesting thing about the OP is that it brought out people's tendency to be control freaks and to bully other people into doing what they see fit as proper behavior. In a way that's very necessary for the overall good of society. Out of a nation of over 320 million people we can afford to allow a couple of thousand use street drugs without too much harm. But we can't allow it to get to the point where 200 million people use street drugs. That will be a disaster for all of us.
While I'm in favor of personal freedom even I see the need for oppressive controls under certain conditions. Consequently I'm not a big fan of rehabilitation because that says that you can do whatever you want and I will rescue you. I also don't like the prison punishment scheme but it's necessary because of the destructive actions some people engage in while on drugs. My solution would to put them on an island and periodically bury them as they die off. That way they will be free to do what they want and they won't be able to harm the greater society by engaging in criminal behavior.
@Diotrephes: don't like the prison punishment scheme but it's necessary because of the destructive actions some people engage in while on drugs.
A lot of that destructive behavior comes from taking dangerous unregulated drugs produced by criminals. A lot of the criminal behavior is motivated by the ruinous cost of illegal drugs.
Neither of those factors would apply if drugs were legal and regulated.
Punishment isn't a necessary evil. If your 1 year old gets too much milk and throws up on your shirt you don't beat the baby. At that stage there is no malice in it's actions. The people doing the crazy things on drugs are in that situation not only are they high but their life situation put them in an Adrenaline flush. They are in no way shape or from thinking clearly about what they are doing and the consequences of their actions. They simply can't not because they don't know right or wrong but in an Adreniline state consequences are not important and in no way considered. Protection from the craziness is important but you don't fix crazy by putting them in prison all you are doing is punishing the child who threw up on your shirt. You quell crazy with a complete evaluation, if needed, meds and a lot of therapy. There is no fix for crazy.
Algebe,
"Neither of those factors would apply if drugs were legal and regulated."
So, do you want a federal agency to do the regulating and doctors to issue prescriptions with insurance drug plans to have the drugs on their formularies? Will the costs increase under your plan? What will the for profit prisons do for their inventory of inmates? Lawyers will lose income.
@Diotrephes: So, do you want a federal agency to do the regulating and doctors to issue prescriptions with insurance drug plans to have the drugs on their formularies?
Just about everything you eat or drink is regulated in some way. Food processing plants and restaurants have hygiene inspections. Liquor must be produced to the exact strength shown on the label. If you buy a can of beer labeled as 4%, you don't expect it to be 25%. I haven't noticed food and drink becoming prohibitively expensive because of this type of regulation.
I don't care much about lawyers losing income. Most of them are incompetent thieving swine who aren't fit to shovel shite.
I don't really have a plan either. I'm just saying that the present approach--prohibition, incarceration, the "war on drugs"-- has used up vast amounts of treasure while achieving nothing but huge profits for drug lords and prison operators. It's time to think again.
too long...tsk tsk tsk..
let me check the comments.. to get the point of the post..
hhmm..scrolling scrolling....
It is vital to look at those around you as equals. Equally smart and equally stupid. Trump is an idiot! Right? Black and white! Absolutely not just like you he is incapable of many things and shows an illogical path with most things. But I attest he is smarter than all of you and me included! When was the last time you picked up a porn star or playmate at a golf tournament? I never have come close. Whether you think his poor slave of a wife is pretty or not I bet she is a hell of a lot better looking when they hooked up that any woman or man you have ever been able to enjoy sexually. He is a piece of shit of a person but you can't say he isn't intelligent, you are not president!
We all are good and bad, black and white! No, we are all gray!
Don't look down on what you don't like. Religion is bad is not true. You can't even say that anyone who eats the wafer or gets down on their knees is stupid. For them the fact that there is a god is a fact. It gives great comfort and support in a life devoid of the same.
Your fact there either isn't a god or gods or that there is but you just aren't sure of which is correct for you is a fact. You are as blind and as smart as any bible thumper. It is to look at life as not black and white that is important to see that everything you know and everything everyone else knows as fact are like Schrodinger's cat, both alive and dead, true and false. It is to try and ensure that what you see as probably true (not fact) is as close to not just the consensus, but takes into account as many different set of FACT variables as can be.