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LadyEllen -> RE: Tattooing a Killer (11/5/2006 6:21:30 AM)
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Thompson - legalise all drugs? Its something I've thought about too. It seems to me, that its not "bad" people who abuse drugs (including alcohol, the most pernicious and evil drug in our society), but people who find themselves in circumstances which are too much for them to cope with, and from which they seek escape, for which drugs are a solution. Not only environmental circumstances which as a society we could do something about, but also psychological circumstances.
Looking at it this way, the abuse of drugs is performing a societal function in some ways - millions of people self medicating to get through a life which otherwise is shit. Its the crime which the illegality of drugs causes - people must steal, lie and cheat to obtain the money for their medication, and those selling the medication must use violence to preserve their markets, which produces the negative impact on society in general, not the use of the drugs themselves.
There is an argument there for the legalised and controlled dispensing of drugs to people, if we are to admit as a society that we really dont give a rat's arse about how bad their lives or their mental conditions are - which indeed seems to be the case. At a stroke, we remove the need for crime on the part of those taking the drugs, and remove the highly socially dangerous factor of organised criminal drug distribution.
I also see something of a personal freedom issue in there; surely if we are all possessed of individual freedom then what we choose to ingest, smoke or inject, is no one else's business? Why is it that alcohol is legal, and allowed to run rampant in our society, with the traditional vagrant wino seen as a somewhat comic figure, whilst the equivalent is so frowned upon when the drug of choice is one currently on the banned list? Surely, if government bans drugs because of the health problems and social damage they cause, then it must ergo also ban the most commonly abused drug, (alcohol) and at once cease and desist from obtaining tax revenues from its sale, to resolve the enormous problems which alcohol produces and to avoid the charge of living off earnings which were they derived from any other drug, would be a criminal offence?
In the end though, legalising drugs, whilst it would solve the criminal behaviour which the current arrangements produce, would only produce other problems. Were such drugs as heroin as freely available as alcohol, then I believe we would find a very high percentage of our populations living as addicts - in fact multiple addicts with addiction to several different drugs. Aside from the loss of judgement which drugs occasion - leading to all manner of ills, there are also very real social and health issues arising from their use which would result in the collapse of our countries. Everyone's life is shit at times, and some people's lives are shit all the time, so drug use would become universal were it not for the current criminal penalties associated with it. I believe we only have to look at the depth and breadth of alcohol abuse and its effects on individuals, families and society in general, to realise that adding more legalised drugs to the list of possible ways of escape from reality, would result in only an incease in those negative influences overall.
The only solution I see is to produce a society where no one has to have a shit life from which they wish to seek escape. However, that aint never gonna happen, I fear, as those with the power to produce such a society dont care, and those voting for them would never choose the kind of social and economic policies which would be required. Meanwhile, those using the drugs now, generally I would say dont vote at all, and need not be listened to by anyone anyway - indeed anyone in power associating with drug addicts only ever suffers negative publicity for it anyway, and its far easier all round, and far more popular, to write them off as evil.
E
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