The Political Thread

[Frank]

It could further argued that Legalization would reduce Crime; Trafficking at the very least

This is a really spoddy point, but there's a difference between legalisation and decriminalisation. No country on Earth has legalised drug production, distribution, or use. Decriminalisation still treats those first two activities as criminal activities, but allows addicts to seek medical help for their addiction without fear of prosecution. The state effectively muscles in on the dealer's/traffickers action and assumes the role of the biggest pusher in history.

[ZenArcade]

Fair point, it is also the case that the addiction epedemic is caused by deep rooted societal problems which drive people to become addicts. I am of course subject to correction but I find it hard to believe anyone actually takes heroin of Crack Cocaine as a lifestyle choice.
Anyone who sniffs coke up their nose is just an arrant, got up dick of course. Z

[Hawkmumbler]

Is there a solution?

Nuke it from orbit. Should do the job.

[Old Tankie]

Legalise drugs and tax them and use the taxes raised to help people with a drug problem.  Or is that the view of an old git who doesn't know what he's talking about?

[The Legendary Shark]

When I suggest doing something ourselves, I don't mean diving into squats and dragging the addict of your choice out by the collar to be cured in your shed with Lemsip and warm words or sweeping away the services and professionals already hip-deep in this problem.
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Help comes in many forms and with many levels so just help who you can how you can and where you can - this can range from donating some tea bags or biscuits to a drop-in centre, dissuading someone you know from starting a habit, volunteering for a few hours a month or signing up for a degree course in social work. It won't cure the problem but it will help.
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In fact, just helping someone who is in a bad place before they turn to drugs, or even think of turning to drugs, is just as important if not more so. Just help everyone you can, addict or not, that's really all any of us can do. In fact, I think most of us do that anyway - so just by listening to our friends when they need it has probably saved countless lives already. I'm not suggesting anything new or radical here.
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[ZenArcade]

Not really, but it begs the question on public policy, health etc. Should the Government be legalising something which has an adverse effect on public health. The move over the past few decades has been away from this.

[ZenArcade]

Sorry shark I was replying to Tankie. Z

[The Legendary Shark]

My view is that people should be free to ingest whatever they want and be responsible for the consequences.
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The role of government in this, again in my view, is to provide unbiased education, safe products and to pick up the pieces if it all goes breasts aloft.
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Of course, attempting to cure "the drug problem" in isolation is futile unless concomitant contributory factors, such as poverty, homelessness, debt, lack of options, etc., etc., etc., are also addressed.

[The Legendary Shark]

No problem, Z - I figured that out :-D
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[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

The problem with just straight legalization of controlled substances, is that it costs the cartels money. A few states in America have legalized pot, and it's reckoned it has lost the cartels three billion dollars a year. That should give you pause for thought. If you legalized everything, the Cartels would lose a huge amount of revenue. Then what? Would they go quietly into the night?

[ZenArcade]

If you extripate the revenue stream yes possibly. The risks involved in other illegal activities are high and the returns considerably lower. Z

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

If you extripate the revenue stream yes possibly. The risks involved in other illegal activities are high and the returns considerably lower. Z

Capone them! Of course!

[TordelBack]

Of course, attempting to cure "the drug problem" in isolation is futile unless concomitant contributory factors, such as poverty, homelessness, debt, lack of options, etc., etc., etc., are also addressed.

No arguments there, and thanks for all the ideas and opinions, all.

I suppose I'm really trying to think of how you can help the end-products of the problem.  I'm not kidding when I say I've been watching them from behind my Harris fencing and thinking time and again that they look like the walking dead, somehow excluded from the world of the living that blurs by them.  I also found myself thinking the Twilight Zone episode where everyone is frozen in time but the protagonist, or that Stephen King short The Langoliers where all but a handful of people have disappeared and they wander about trying to make sense of the empty world.  Only a few weeks back I'd been marvelling at the zombie-horde antics of the post chucking-out clubbing crowd in another part of town, and finding it all pretty damn amusing: this is something utterly different.  These are people, who presumably came into the world exactly the same as the rest of us, and have now ended up being viewed by people like me behind my security fence as some kind of terrible other: it's appalling.

Our former Lord Mayor (up 'til last week) was on the radio a few months back advocating for a properly resourced combined treatment and accommodation centre in the city itself, as an alternative to walk-in clinics and random hostels, and he subsequently perhaps predictably lost his Council seat in the recent local elections, when the dominant current of opinion on the radio and internet is 'stick them in jail or exile them all to an island, along with the Travellers'.  But I wonder is it just wishful thinking that that such a centre would have any real effect? 

I'm now seriously considering getting involved with groups that work with these guys.  I just can't get it out of my head that there's this whole world of horror at the other end of the tram line from my house, and no-one seems capable of doing anything about it.

[ZenArcade]

Tordel of course try and do something as an individual, that is what being a participative member of society is all about.  You are, I'm sure, more than aware that this positive participation will be no easy thing in the sense that the people you are trying to help and reach will have problems much seeper than the addiction issues.
Society today is ill divided and in my view getting progressivly more so and the 'end product' you see now may well be a different end product in a few years timen by which I mean people further up the reletive poverty scale. Unhappily yours. Z

[TordelBack]

Nah, I get that I'm entirely the wrong person to be a direct help, at this point anyway: I'm not quite that naive.  A good mate of mine worked in the probation service for many years, and a more compassionate, realistic and positive fellow you would never meet, and it just gradually ground him down and down - and I'm not half the man he is.  I would like to talk to people and groups that have practical experience, and get an idea of what could be done to help, and then start working towards that. The idea that it's acceptable that a society allows people to end up in this state, and then just hopes they'll go away...