Posted on 01/24/2016 11:09:18 AM PST by big bad easter bunny
Drug/substance abuse lands people in prison.
We’re simply warehousing criminals, not dealing with the underlying problem.
Its one that cops, prosecutors and judges are poorly equipped to treat.
We can’t jail our way of drug/substance addiction.
If you are poor, don’t waste your money on drugs/alcohol. That will only guarantee that you will stay poor. Don’t blame the police for your dug/alcohol problems. Take responsibility for your own mistakes.
Your advice will change nothing and you are saying only wealthy people should do drugs?
I’ve been preaching everything that you said for years and I applaud you for saying it better than I ever did.
Please check out LEAP (law enforcement against prohibition)
I would also like to point out that pain patients are some of the biggest victims of the WOD.
The press hypes ‘opiate overdose deaths’, but fail to report that more than half of those numbers are for heroin. Not the arthritic grandmother who follows the rules. It’s also come out that, when they get an OD, if the person has hydrocodone and heroin in their system at the time of death, they count that ONE person as TWO separate deaths.
Again, the man dying of MS or cancer is not doing heroin.
I asked one of my doctors if the government counted the suicides from a LACK of pain management and he said no. But there is a growing body of evidence that the increase in both veteran and senior citizen suicides are from exactly that.
They are casualties of the WOD as well.
Part of the problem, I am convinced, is the progressive cynicism and loss of innocence that has permeated society. IMHO, there is a 'group' psychology that has broad effects across society, and over the past few decades there has been a creeping increase in moral relativism, and a concomitant progressive loss of hope and belief in good.
I'm not talking about what you or I specifically believe is right, or what our specific beliefs are. I'm talking about a much more general belief and sense in society that charity is good, love is good, not lying is a virtue, manipulative self-serving behavior is bad, etc. The list is long, but all of it deals with a very general belief that if you try to live a good life and do good in the world, you are a success.
What we are left with in the absence of these values is the same sense of hopelessness that led to such a high alcoholism rate in the USSR. There is a loss of purpose and meaning, and drugs are just a way to avoid the depressive dreariness of life without meaning. So, the only real way to deal with it successfully is to restore hope and faith in society. Just my thoughts, as someone who has felt that hopelessness more than once.
As a parting comment, when as a society you see people repeatedly get away with bad acts, and even progress to high levels despite these acts, it erodes hope and faith in goodness. What a lot of politicians have gotten away with, including one who is running for the Presidency, erodes faith in justice, and this contributes to despair. In short, I think we've become a depressed society.
Legalize drugs. Give them away free. You eliminate the crime and cost to society
I’d recommend some thirty caliber therapy for the kingpins and their political enablers.
There is nothing new under the sun says the Good Book. Just as elected officials and judges once profited from prohibition, so are today’s drug lords intertwined with our political class
Were we wise to end Prohibition, or should we have continued that battle? (I say the former.)
“We can’t jail our way of drug/substance addiction.”
That’s very true but people get a lot of satisfaction seeing people punished for doing thing they don’t like.
Legalization vs. The War on Drugs
Prohibition vs. Repeal
I think the either/or choice is increasingly irrelevant. It is naive to believe the ruling class is going to correct a profitable problem.
Truly fixing this will require a correction/healing of the soul. Escapism and no hope are symptoms of a broken spirit.
Which wouldn't excuse supporting the wrong policy. (And the problem at least in its marijuana aspect is trending toward correction.)
Truly fixing this will require a correction/healing of the soul.
That is the ultimate solution, for which government force is no substitute.
Portugal did this several years ago. Enforcement funds went towards treatment Instead of incarceration and usage went down.
Interesting, though awkward. Appears to lump drug dealers in with drug users. Release them all seems to be the prevailing sentiment.
Making welfare checks and all other government benefits contingent on passing drug tests would offer much more incentive for staying off drugs.
True - but criminalizing alcohol or other drugs serves only to guarantee that dealers will stay rich.
Why this is not done is a travesty of justice.
“We certainly do have a huge drug problem in this country but almost all the damage occurs because of law enforcement. “
—
Yeah,right.
That’s where I stopped reading.
.
It’s a shame that almost 2 hours into a post that you obviously worked so hard on, there are less than 20 comments at the time I write this response.
As for me, I really don’t know the answer to your question, but my observation is that to punish people for doing what people have been doing since the dawn of man seems wrong.
IMO, the harsh criminalization has done nothing but make a societal problem worse. Anything and everything having to do with drugs, from law enforcement to prisons, courts and every other industry that’s related in some fashion to drugs and the people that use them has become such a behemoth that it will never go away unless and until this society as it’s presently constituted is destroyed and restarted.
It’s not going to be a popular idea here, but IMO, it would be less expensive and less damaging overall if any type of drug people wanted were made available for free, along with safe places to get as high as they may want as long as they don’t cause problems to others.
As it is now, people will do any kind of dangerous thing imaginable to feed their drug habit and in so doing, they put the rest of us at risk in their endeavors because we have what they need to get what they want.
If people want to medicate themselves to death, why fight it when it would be better for those of us who don’t want to don’t ever have to become involved with them?
It seems a much better use of my tax dollars to allow someone who wants to kill himself to do so as long as he leaves me alone otherwise.
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