It’s not the first time I’ve said it, but it bears repeating – the time has come to institute dedicated drunk driving lanes.
44 Replies to “Furthering The Cause Of Harm Reduction”
What an excellent idea – dedicated drunk driving lanes! Ahh, that will prevent the drunk driver from coming to harm – and that’s our intention, isn’t it?
Problem: drunk drivers can’t remain in lanes.
Problem: can I pretend to be drunk so I can drive in that lane and get by all those cars crawling along in heavy traffic?
Problem: is the only problem with drunkenness the fact that they can’t drive straight? Are there any harmful familial, work results? Are there any harmful physical and medical results?
Now- let’s consider the article, which states that SINCE the results of drug injections might be harmful diseases, THEN the answer is to promote taxpayer funded ‘safe-injection sites’.
Ahh – the same linear causality as the drunk driving theme.
But – aren’t there other results to drug use than problematic diseases? Is there only ONE result – disease from dirty needles? Only ONE result???
Well – heck – if there’s only that ONE result, then, by all means – go for it.
But – aren’t there other results? Doesn’t drug use destroy the physical health of the body. Not the dirty needles; the drug itself. Oh – it does? So?
Doesn’t drug use disable the user’s ability to work and throw him on the funding of the taxpayer?
Doesn’t the drug use disable the user’s ability to think and promote violent and unstable social behaviour?
I like linear simple one-to-one cause and effect opinions. They are so simple; it’s easy to control the world using that type of ‘thinking’. The only problem is – the world doesn’t operate in this simple one-to-one mode. Ah well.
Next the government will provide safe places where you can commit
* assaults
* robberies
* rapes
* …
Simple linear thinking is all the fuzzy-wuzzy feeling-goody kumbaya-singers can handle.
By their logic, we should provide other ‘safe shooting sites’ so that gangs can blast away at each other without harming innocent bystanders. That’s one I would support.
Why would we want to spend taxpayer dollars to protect the life of someone who has no respect for their own life. Most of these people would sell out their own mother for their next fix.
Nothing like investing in our future. If only we could link drug use to global warming, then watch the lefties twist as they have to decide which cause to support.
Wait a minute, there must be some greenhouse gases emitted while these guys are cooking up these drugs. We need to commision a study or a task force to look into the impact of meth labs on the environment.
Then, since I don’t use drugs, I could sell my carbon credits to my local drug dealer.
Note: My previous post was referring to Kate’s link. I am all for a drunk driving lane, although it would have to be very wide.
Conventional linear thinking seems to be working well: use illegal drugs…go to jail. What? It’s not working? Hmmm.
“Conventional linear thinking seems to be working well: use illegal drugs…go to jail. What? It’s not working? Hmmm.”
If stricter penalties don’t work, then why are the pro-drug advocates silent when tougher drunk driving laws are enacted?
Perhaps your analogy would make more sense if you gave details about how you are comparing drunk driving to drug abuse. It sounds an awful lot like a facile false comparison. On the face of it there are enough tenuous connections to give the appearance of similarity, but you will be hard pressed to flesh them out.
Iberia – you are trapped in linear thinking. You think that X-tactic must lead to NO use of drugs. That’s not how reality works.
The agenda is to reduce the use of drugs to a minimal ratio of the population. That’s the function of prison sentences. Why? Because drug use is costly to a population. The costs are the burden of supporting people whose health collapses with drug use; the costs of dealing with the results of their drug-induced anti-social violence; the costs to the economy with the loss of their work, and the harm they do to others.
No society, no matter how altruistic, can afford to support more than a minimal ratio of its population who cannot contribute. This minimal ratio will include the disabled of any type and even, the infants and children. There has to be a functional ratio of dependency/independence.
Importantly, no society, no matter how altruistic, can survive if a ratio of its population commits dangerous and harmful actions.
The agenda of prison is not to stop that individual from their addiction; it’s to prevent other individuals from joining the Drug Addicted Ratio of the population.
Generously increasing this proportion, by legalizing drugs, enabling safe-injection sites and so on – is great for the Feel-Good About My Compassion Self-Identity. But – it’s extremely dangerous for the society.
Again, the issue is proportion. No society can permit more than a minimal proportion of its population to move out of productivity and no society can permit more than an even more minimal proportion of its population to move into actual harm to others in that society.
Get it?
“Ahh, that will prevent the drunk driver from coming to harm – and that’s our intention, isn’t it?”
No ET! Drunk drivers are todays lepers! There is no greater crime than DD. Second worst is smoking tobacco, or maybe denying global warming.
I want to know if this drunk lane can be used by someone wacked out on drugs driving a stolen car. It sounds to me that it’s only for abusers of alchoal. I think that’s blatant discrmination.
Next the government will provide safe places where you can commit
* assaults
* robberies
* rapes
* …
they do , they call it parole.
It wasn’t an analogy.
If only parents talked to their children…
… the taxpayers of Canada would not have had to pick a tab for letting the junkies get stoned in safety.
This is everyone’s business, not provincial, not municipal and damn sure not federal. Go freaking up/downstairs and talk to your kids, for krying out loud. Get your ass moving, and there will be no need to spend our taxes on providing needles to the addicts.
ET:
I don’t know how you missed it but I’m mocking linear thinking.
Sure, we can round up every dealer and addict and lock them up, but the problem with that is it would be too expensive.
Addicts and alcoholics are unhappy people. Some have had bad things happen to them. Many others have a mental illness. Some of these people can function relatively well in normal society, but many don’t and end up on the street, stuck in a cycle of drug taking and criminal activity to support this lifestyle.
Mental health care funding was cut in the 80’s and a lot of borderline people were released into society to fend for themselves. I would hazard a guess that many of the addicts on the street are these borderline type people. Now, society has to come to grips with how to deal with these people. And linear thinking (ie.simply punishing) is obviously not working.
The reason I missed it, iberia, is because it (your mockery) was missing. If you could possibly show me where in that sentence, such mockery was articulated – I’d be interested. In fact, the last sentence of your recent post shows that you were not mocking linear thinking; you meant what you originally said.
1)Your suggestion that locking up every dealer and addict is ‘too expensive’ ignores that such a lockup is not the function of the legal system. The dealers are the ones locked up.
2)Your statement that the causality of addiction to drugs and alcohol is ‘unhappiness’ is naive and an ‘ad misericordiam’ (appeal to pity) fallacy.
Many addicts to both, do it for the ‘highs’ – which are desired in and only for themselves. The use of these drugs is not due to ‘being hit when I was a child’ or other ‘misericordiam’ excuses.
Furthermore, most people have had traumas, unhappiness etc in their lives; that does not mean that they end up as addicts. No society could function if the majority of its citizens were so vulnerable. Therefore, your reduction of addiction to being an inevitable result of ‘unhappiness’ is, as I said, naive and simplistic.
3) Don’t link mental illness to drug or alcohol addiction; that’s quite a different problem. The proportion of mental illness within a society can be kept within the capacity of the society to deal with this requirement for their support by various therapies, drugs etc.
Equally, your suggestion that most of the addicts are mentally ill, and are on the street (?) because of reduction of mental health support is a red herring. The majority of drug users are not on the street or mentally ill.Those people can’t support the drug dealers!
The proportion the society is worried about is not this low statistic but the drug use among the youth and the adults – the middle class, who are neither mentally ill nor on the street, but instead, are quite well off, become chemical addicts and turn to violence, theft, extortion etc to support their addiction. And, the drug runners require more and more addicts, to serve as consumers in their ‘economy’ – a very rich economy. And the drug runners set up gangs in this Drug Economy – which fight each other, involve civilians and so on. That’s the problem the society has to deal with – and that’s why the drug emperors ought to be in jail.
Your emotional example of ‘they were all abused’ and ‘they are all mentally ill’ is not relevant. Most of them, by the way, are not addicts; they can’t afford it.
Kate: Define it how you want; it was a rather retarded comparison. If you can’t see the difference between a single act that directly endangers the lives of citizens (other drivers) that would be ridiculously expensive to stop with your method and much easier to stop before it occurs, and a habitual, individual act that only indirectly harms society, occurs over a much longer time frame and is easier to address through rehabilitation (being mostly a public health issue amenable to long term harm reduction techniques), then a simpleminded disingenuous comparison will suffice.
Free drugs and needles? Sure, but only at a secure rehab clinic, while the client is undergoing addiction withdrawal. That’s it.
Why the hell should the rest of have to pay to promote continued drug abuse by the addicted?
Joe: If you read some of the comments from the people that support the program (doctors and researchers alike), it’s because the overall harm done is reduced when it is treated as a public health issue. In any case, the only purpose of most blogs is to elicit flame wars and ask meaningless rhetorical questions, so I’m not going to waste any time reiterating what has been written, discussed and debated over and over by the supporters. If anyone was actually interested in understanding the problem they’d have already looked up all the viewpoints and done the research, and they wouldn’t be on a blog. They would be applying themselves constructively to the problem.
BTW, what I said above applies to probably everyone else that is about to try and get into a discussion about harm reduction policies. Why should I do all the legwork? If you actually care about the issue beyond ideology, then go and do the research yourself.
Send them all to Cuba :^)))
Worked for Castro….
I stand by my comments. Rehab/withdrawal OK.
Otherwise, if you do the crime, you do the time.
No more public dollars should be wasted on supporting poor choices, horrific lifestyles, and criminal behaviour, except to build more prisons to keep them where they belong.
ET:
What surprises me is that someone as articulate as you can have a reading comprehension problem.
Linear thinking: Punishment stops criminal behaviour. I said that this is not working infering that we need to try some alternatives. (“What? It’s not working? Hmm.”)
1. “… lockup is not the function of the legal system. The dealers are the ones locked up.” Huh?
2. Saying that addicts and alcoholics are not happy people is generalizing. I never claimed that this was “the cause” nor did I write that “all” of them were abused or mentally ill.
3. “…your suggestion that most of the addicts are mentally ill, and are on the street …”
I stated clearly that I was guessing; I don’t have any studies in front of me, and I’m writing this on my break so I’m not about to do any extensive research.
“The proportion of mental illness within a society can be kept within the capacity of the society to deal with this requirement for their support by various therapies, drugs etc.” And before the 1980’s it was. Is building more prisons a cheaper alternative?
“The proportion the society is worried about is not this low statistic but the drug use among the youth and the adults – the middle class…”
We should be worried about all of society. And how do you know what percentage of addicts are middle class, etc.? What difference does it make? Once they spend all their money they become part of this “low statistic”.
I agree, the drug emperors should be in jail. But why isn’t this happening? Certainly not because of a needle exchange or two.
Eventually most drug addicts can’t afford it. That’s when they resort to crime and that’s when the rest of us are affected.
anon- why are you on a blog? You’ve already told us that most blogs have the purpose only to inflame and, if the individual knew about the subject, they wouldn’t be on a blog. Therefore, why are you on a blog? Why aren’t you doing something constructive?
Your other logical problem is that you are assuming that IF one knew about (and understood) the program, THEN, one would be in favor of it. Not so. There are plenty of reports that reject the existence of any assumed benefits.
ET: Ahhh, tricky retort….however I didn’t say what you assert. I said that if anyone actually cared to solve the problem – rather than just talk about it – then they would have done research and would be contributing to the solution constructively. I will admit that I’ve spent time looking into the issue in consideration of both points of view, and I clearly fall on one side, but the difference is that I don’t have the time to advocate for any position, and I just came on here to point out how ridiculous the comparison of harm reduction programs to ‘drunk driving lanes’ was. That is, I came here to flame a pointless comparison, completely in line with my theory about blogs.
In my experience, the only thing that will be found on a blog is a lot of people appealing to ‘common sense’ and handwaving arguments, both of which are almost useless and nearly impossible to counter owing to the lack of any real, verifiable premises or facts. It is a subtle mix of opinion and argument, and coming on a blog to throw around wishy-washy ‘opinioments’ seems to me to be entirely an exercise in ideology.
Kate: “If stricter penalties don’t work, then why are the pro-drug advocates silent when tougher drunk driving laws are enacted?”
Because driving drunk manifestly puts others at risk while smoking a joint at home puts no one besides the user at risk (and a very small risk at that). As someone else once observed, the maximum harm from smoking marijuana comes from the legal system, not the drug.
I find it vaguely ironic that our society 1)allows women to kill their unborn children in the name of “controlling their own bodies”, 2) makes billions of dollars a year selling us alcohol, and 3) locks you up for smoking a joint.
I still don’t see why you are posting on this blog, anon. You’ve clearly stated that it’s a waste of time, that most posters don’t know what they are talking about..etc. So, leave.
iberia – You can’t change what you wrote. You didn’t suggest alternatives. You said “addicts and alcoholics are unhappy people’; that was your Major Premise..the rest followed within that axiom. Therefore, that is the basic cause. Logic 101.
And, since you now say that you don’t really know that much about the situation, that you haven’t done any research, that you are guessing – then, why are you posting?
This ‘low statistic’ doesn’t refer to the ‘low economic class’ but to the percentage of mentally ill. They obviously exist in any society, but, the proportion has to be low. Increase the proportion of disabled members of the society, ie, by addiction, and the society is in trouble.
Why aren’t the drug dealers in jail? Because of our leftist justice system, which defines them as ‘unhappy’, as ‘victims of their childhood’ or whatever.
kevinb- don’t trivialize this discussion. We are not discussing ‘smoking a joint’ but genuine addiction to both alcohol and hard drugs. Your ‘joint’ is a red herring. Stick to the topic.
KevinB – that wasn’t the question I asked.
To reiterate: if stricter penalites are an ineffective tool for curbing criminal drug use as the pro-drug lobbies says, then why do we buy into the argument that stricter penalties are effective at curbing criminal alcohol use?
Does that make it clearer for you?
And as far as the argument that “drug users harm only themselves” – tell that to two families in Yorkton today, One with a dead drug-dealing son, the other with a father facing sentencing for second degree murder.
ET:
Get a hold of yourself…I am just making some general comments here, not giving a detailed plan on how to solve the drug problem in our society.
I don’t deny that I wrote that drug addicts and alcoholics are unhappy people. I did not write that “therefore unhappiness is the cause of their addiction”. You need to take Logic 101 over again if that’s your conclusion.
Why are you posting? You criticize alternatives to incarceration as “linear logic” yet you don’t provide any alternatives either. It seems as though you just want more people to go to jail. Crime = time. So tell me again who is using linear logic?
We could have “driving a drunk lanes” on Friday & Saturday nights…the problem in Calgary is there’s way too few taxi drivers to make good use of the lanes to get all the drunks to take a back seat for safety.
KevinB, your “harmless” joint is part of a billion dollar industry in Canada. It’s an industry completely controlled by criminal organizations. Hells Angels, Outlaws, Mafia, and others. The profits from your joints buy guns, cocaine, meth, and more. People are dying on a daily basis because of the illegal drug trade. And your “harmless” joint, and the millions of other “harmless” joints being smoked in Canada are making criminals, thugs, and murderers rich and powerful. How many bullets do your joints buy I wonder?
The difference between drugs and alcohol is that alcohol is legal to purchase and the quality is regulated by the goverment.
KevinB:”…while smoking a joint at home…”
Let me finish the thought for you:
…felt like the cool thing to do…just before teenage buddy speeds off in his ’89 Honda Civic with your daughter after a touching evening of “at the movies with her friends”. In his anxious blue smoke driven haste, buddy badly misjudges an easy corner on McKnight Boulevard and gets to test Newton’s third law of motion on a rather sturdy light standard. As buddy rockets forward from his seat towards the windshield he’s struck first by the thought that it doesn’t happen this way on “Toopy and Binoo” (his favorite tv show with great hidden philosophical meaning which he regularly unlocked with weed power).
They’ve since removed most of the glass out of mutant buddy’s face and the cast is now off the wrist on his favorite toking hand. The hand kinda hurts and doesn’t work like it used to but it can still pinch a thick reefer good enough. He’s now resolved to smoke up even more often now – it blurs the scars and helps him laugh again like before. Even so, in buddy’s happily hazey consciousness there’s one road he knows never to travel down. It’s not McKnight Boulevard, after all he HAS to take that one to keep up his herb supply from his main man’s house a couple of blocks from the repaired light standard. No, it’s the one that leads past the cemetary gates that leads to the mound of freshy churned up dirt under which your daughter now eternally rests.
Whether or not it is a joint, an injected illegal drug(from a clean government supplied needle, of course) or booze, driving while under the influence is a crime and as Martin points out, it is NOT a victimless crime.
I somehow doubt that any of the “it’s just a little weed” crowd would board an airplane if they found out that the flight crew were doing a Cheech & Chong in the cockpit.
re:iberia “Mental health care funding was cut in the 80’s and a lot of borderline people were released into society to fend for themselves.”
..so it’s all due to those nasty cut-backs eh? I guess you’ve (conveniently) forgotten the relentless campaign by the left to close down almost all the residential facilities that used to provide safety and shelter to those who could not take care of themselves.
Well Mike, when this was happening I was living in Ontario and the Conservatives were the government of the day. If you want to think of them as left wing, go ahead. I don’t recall any right wing protests. Oh, you can also thank Mike Harris for putting the finishing touches on this issue. I was really impressed by the shanty towns that sprung up all over Toronto when he was in power.
I doubt that there are many people who think, any more, that doing dangerous things while under the influence of anything that tends to distract one’s attention from the dangerous task at hand is a good idea. Driving, if one’s not paying one’s full attention, is a dangerous thing.
But what about doing not dangerous things? As H. L. Mencken said, “The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind.”
Dean Martin was absolutely correct when he said, “If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.” But so was Abraham Lincoln whe he said, “If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall in to this vice. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity.”
An astute German nobleman once noted, “No matter how rich you are, you can still only drink 16 or 17 liters of beer a day.” Just don’t over do it, for as Robert Heinlein noted, “Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors… and miss.”
First of all, the cops have been lying growing pot indoors for years. It is as safe as growing tomatoes. Ask any gardner. Don’t ask someone whose paycheck depends on you believing their story.
“Organized crime.” ROTFL. I’ve studies this industry extensively, and sorry,this is simply another myth perpetuated by the police, just like Texas Canucks’ comment about cannabis and flying.
It is calculated and designed to instill fear over a misunderstood plant that only has the interest of organized crime BECAUSE it’s illegal. And it was made illegal for racist reasons, not health reasons, so the entre prohibition is illegitimate.
Ah, and the latest cause celebre, pot causing that crash on Highway 7 between Perth and Carleton Place from a few years back? Total BS and spin, and the judge even found that mairjuana had nothing to do with the crash!
That doesn’t stop Murie and Lebreton are out there using those families and telling reporters that the driver “was high on pot” when he killed those poor teens. Bollocks. The road has a very poor safety record and the place where the accident occured is a known bad spot.
Sorry, but the moralists have lost the PR war on pot and are now willing to say just about anything to keep the prohibition going. There is even a shift going on in the Conservative Party.
If Harper wants his majority, he better come up with some new thinking about drugs, or else the 45% of people who think that the current situation is way, way too cop-centric will migrate to the other parties.
(BTW, some “high” ranking Conservatives should probably keep their puffing habits to themselves. things were a little skunky outside one of the Market’s finer establishments recently, where some bluecoats were refreshing themselves. My little hypocrite file on marijuana is growing thicker by the day. 🙂
”And as far as the argument that “drug users harm only themselves” – tell that to two families in Yorkton today, One with a dead drug-dealing son, the other with a father facing sentencing for second degree murder.”
The situation in Yorkton was not the result of drug use, it was the result of a father with access to a lethal weapon acting as judge, jury and executioner.
Draconian measures against driving under the influence are justified by the carnage on our highways.
There is nothing that would justify the hypocritical War on Some Drugs.
anonymous – you aren’t making any sense. In any of your statements.
1)Growing marijuana indoors is irrelevant.
2)Marijuana growth and sales are indeed tied to organized crime. Kindly provide proof that this is only a myth.
3)Kindly provide proof that making marijuana illegal was for ‘racist reasons’. Since it is illegal almost the world over – this would be an interesting explanation.
4)Most certainly, its use causes effects. Otherwise, why use it? Are you claiming that its use has NO effects on the individual? It is a psychoactive drug, which means that it alters brain function, resulting in changes in perception. Are you aware that driving a car requires that you NOT change your capacity to perceive reality/
5) Provide proof that 45% of Canadians favour marijuana legalization.
And don’t bother us with your fictional tales of ‘by the way’.
MaryJane – The situation in Yorkton WAS the result of drug use; the boyfriend was a pusher and drug dealer. The father could not bear to see his daughter in this guy’s power.
The war on drugs is valid. Do you know why? Because drugs change the ability of the indivdual to think, to work, to live – and affect their physical well-being. Someone ‘high’ on drugs is just as capable of deadly driving as someone high on alcohol. In addition, the drug user moves into a state of mind, energized, where they readily harm others, thinking themselves invincible. Never mind the drug gangs…as well.
ET- The situation was the result of the man thinking he could deal with a situation he didn’t like with extreme violence. Drugs were peripheral, at best.
The war on drugs is invalid because the one drug that most affects one’s ability to think, work and live, that puts the user into a state of mind where they harm others is socially-sanctioned alcohol, while much more benign substances are criminalized. Never mind the drug gangs, whose source of money and power is prohibition.
maryjane – your analogy is invalid. You are saying that IF and Only IF all mind-altering actions/ingestive substances are defined as illegal, then – unless this is done – none of them should be defined as illegal. The fallacy is to equate universality with validity.
I certainly agree that an excess of alcohol alters the brain function. A minimum (eg, one glass of wine) does not. I am not aware that there is any drug that is ‘benign’ and whose ingestion does not alter the mind to a dangerous degree. Furthermore, drugs are addictive in a chemical manner that alcohol is not.
The ingestion of the drug caffeine, which is done on a voluntary daily basis in small amounts by the vast majority of adult humans, does not alter the mind to a dangerous degree. On the other hand, if you’ve just had three double espressos in ten minutes, you shouldn’t be driving a car.
ET… your argument is invalid. You stated the war on drugs is valid because drugs change drugs change the ability of the individual to think, work and live and moves the user into a state of mind where they readily harm others. No drug fits that bill like alcohol, yet there is no war on alcohol.
There are many substances that are relatively benign and certainly less dangerous than booze. Alcohol is not addictive??? What are you smokin’??
What an excellent idea – dedicated drunk driving lanes! Ahh, that will prevent the drunk driver from coming to harm – and that’s our intention, isn’t it?
Problem: drunk drivers can’t remain in lanes.
Problem: can I pretend to be drunk so I can drive in that lane and get by all those cars crawling along in heavy traffic?
Problem: is the only problem with drunkenness the fact that they can’t drive straight? Are there any harmful familial, work results? Are there any harmful physical and medical results?
Now- let’s consider the article, which states that SINCE the results of drug injections might be harmful diseases, THEN the answer is to promote taxpayer funded ‘safe-injection sites’.
Ahh – the same linear causality as the drunk driving theme.
But – aren’t there other results to drug use than problematic diseases? Is there only ONE result – disease from dirty needles? Only ONE result???
Well – heck – if there’s only that ONE result, then, by all means – go for it.
But – aren’t there other results? Doesn’t drug use destroy the physical health of the body. Not the dirty needles; the drug itself. Oh – it does? So?
Doesn’t drug use disable the user’s ability to work and throw him on the funding of the taxpayer?
Doesn’t the drug use disable the user’s ability to think and promote violent and unstable social behaviour?
I like linear simple one-to-one cause and effect opinions. They are so simple; it’s easy to control the world using that type of ‘thinking’. The only problem is – the world doesn’t operate in this simple one-to-one mode. Ah well.
Next the government will provide safe places where you can commit
* assaults
* robberies
* rapes
* …
Simple linear thinking is all the fuzzy-wuzzy feeling-goody kumbaya-singers can handle.
By their logic, we should provide other ‘safe shooting sites’ so that gangs can blast away at each other without harming innocent bystanders. That’s one I would support.
Why would we want to spend taxpayer dollars to protect the life of someone who has no respect for their own life. Most of these people would sell out their own mother for their next fix.
Nothing like investing in our future. If only we could link drug use to global warming, then watch the lefties twist as they have to decide which cause to support.
Wait a minute, there must be some greenhouse gases emitted while these guys are cooking up these drugs. We need to commision a study or a task force to look into the impact of meth labs on the environment.
Then, since I don’t use drugs, I could sell my carbon credits to my local drug dealer.
Note: My previous post was referring to Kate’s link. I am all for a drunk driving lane, although it would have to be very wide.
Conventional linear thinking seems to be working well: use illegal drugs…go to jail. What? It’s not working? Hmmm.
“Conventional linear thinking seems to be working well: use illegal drugs…go to jail. What? It’s not working? Hmmm.”
If stricter penalties don’t work, then why are the pro-drug advocates silent when tougher drunk driving laws are enacted?
Perhaps your analogy would make more sense if you gave details about how you are comparing drunk driving to drug abuse. It sounds an awful lot like a facile false comparison. On the face of it there are enough tenuous connections to give the appearance of similarity, but you will be hard pressed to flesh them out.
Iberia – you are trapped in linear thinking. You think that X-tactic must lead to NO use of drugs. That’s not how reality works.
The agenda is to reduce the use of drugs to a minimal ratio of the population. That’s the function of prison sentences. Why? Because drug use is costly to a population. The costs are the burden of supporting people whose health collapses with drug use; the costs of dealing with the results of their drug-induced anti-social violence; the costs to the economy with the loss of their work, and the harm they do to others.
No society, no matter how altruistic, can afford to support more than a minimal ratio of its population who cannot contribute. This minimal ratio will include the disabled of any type and even, the infants and children. There has to be a functional ratio of dependency/independence.
Importantly, no society, no matter how altruistic, can survive if a ratio of its population commits dangerous and harmful actions.
The agenda of prison is not to stop that individual from their addiction; it’s to prevent other individuals from joining the Drug Addicted Ratio of the population.
Generously increasing this proportion, by legalizing drugs, enabling safe-injection sites and so on – is great for the Feel-Good About My Compassion Self-Identity. But – it’s extremely dangerous for the society.
Again, the issue is proportion. No society can permit more than a minimal proportion of its population to move out of productivity and no society can permit more than an even more minimal proportion of its population to move into actual harm to others in that society.
Get it?
“Ahh, that will prevent the drunk driver from coming to harm – and that’s our intention, isn’t it?”
No ET! Drunk drivers are todays lepers! There is no greater crime than DD. Second worst is smoking tobacco, or maybe denying global warming.
I want to know if this drunk lane can be used by someone wacked out on drugs driving a stolen car. It sounds to me that it’s only for abusers of alchoal. I think that’s blatant discrmination.
Next the government will provide safe places where you can commit
* assaults
* robberies
* rapes
* …
they do , they call it parole.
It wasn’t an analogy.
If only parents talked to their children…
… the taxpayers of Canada would not have had to pick a tab for letting the junkies get stoned in safety.
This is everyone’s business, not provincial, not municipal and damn sure not federal. Go freaking up/downstairs and talk to your kids, for krying out loud. Get your ass moving, and there will be no need to spend our taxes on providing needles to the addicts.
ET:
I don’t know how you missed it but I’m mocking linear thinking.
Sure, we can round up every dealer and addict and lock them up, but the problem with that is it would be too expensive.
Addicts and alcoholics are unhappy people. Some have had bad things happen to them. Many others have a mental illness. Some of these people can function relatively well in normal society, but many don’t and end up on the street, stuck in a cycle of drug taking and criminal activity to support this lifestyle.
Mental health care funding was cut in the 80’s and a lot of borderline people were released into society to fend for themselves. I would hazard a guess that many of the addicts on the street are these borderline type people. Now, society has to come to grips with how to deal with these people. And linear thinking (ie.simply punishing) is obviously not working.
The reason I missed it, iberia, is because it (your mockery) was missing. If you could possibly show me where in that sentence, such mockery was articulated – I’d be interested. In fact, the last sentence of your recent post shows that you were not mocking linear thinking; you meant what you originally said.
1)Your suggestion that locking up every dealer and addict is ‘too expensive’ ignores that such a lockup is not the function of the legal system. The dealers are the ones locked up.
2)Your statement that the causality of addiction to drugs and alcohol is ‘unhappiness’ is naive and an ‘ad misericordiam’ (appeal to pity) fallacy.
Many addicts to both, do it for the ‘highs’ – which are desired in and only for themselves. The use of these drugs is not due to ‘being hit when I was a child’ or other ‘misericordiam’ excuses.
Furthermore, most people have had traumas, unhappiness etc in their lives; that does not mean that they end up as addicts. No society could function if the majority of its citizens were so vulnerable. Therefore, your reduction of addiction to being an inevitable result of ‘unhappiness’ is, as I said, naive and simplistic.
3) Don’t link mental illness to drug or alcohol addiction; that’s quite a different problem. The proportion of mental illness within a society can be kept within the capacity of the society to deal with this requirement for their support by various therapies, drugs etc.
Equally, your suggestion that most of the addicts are mentally ill, and are on the street (?) because of reduction of mental health support is a red herring. The majority of drug users are not on the street or mentally ill.Those people can’t support the drug dealers!
The proportion the society is worried about is not this low statistic but the drug use among the youth and the adults – the middle class, who are neither mentally ill nor on the street, but instead, are quite well off, become chemical addicts and turn to violence, theft, extortion etc to support their addiction. And, the drug runners require more and more addicts, to serve as consumers in their ‘economy’ – a very rich economy. And the drug runners set up gangs in this Drug Economy – which fight each other, involve civilians and so on. That’s the problem the society has to deal with – and that’s why the drug emperors ought to be in jail.
Your emotional example of ‘they were all abused’ and ‘they are all mentally ill’ is not relevant. Most of them, by the way, are not addicts; they can’t afford it.
Kate: Define it how you want; it was a rather retarded comparison. If you can’t see the difference between a single act that directly endangers the lives of citizens (other drivers) that would be ridiculously expensive to stop with your method and much easier to stop before it occurs, and a habitual, individual act that only indirectly harms society, occurs over a much longer time frame and is easier to address through rehabilitation (being mostly a public health issue amenable to long term harm reduction techniques), then a simpleminded disingenuous comparison will suffice.
Free drugs and needles? Sure, but only at a secure rehab clinic, while the client is undergoing addiction withdrawal. That’s it.
Why the hell should the rest of have to pay to promote continued drug abuse by the addicted?
Joe: If you read some of the comments from the people that support the program (doctors and researchers alike), it’s because the overall harm done is reduced when it is treated as a public health issue. In any case, the only purpose of most blogs is to elicit flame wars and ask meaningless rhetorical questions, so I’m not going to waste any time reiterating what has been written, discussed and debated over and over by the supporters. If anyone was actually interested in understanding the problem they’d have already looked up all the viewpoints and done the research, and they wouldn’t be on a blog. They would be applying themselves constructively to the problem.
BTW, what I said above applies to probably everyone else that is about to try and get into a discussion about harm reduction policies. Why should I do all the legwork? If you actually care about the issue beyond ideology, then go and do the research yourself.
Send them all to Cuba :^)))
Worked for Castro….
I stand by my comments. Rehab/withdrawal OK.
Otherwise, if you do the crime, you do the time.
No more public dollars should be wasted on supporting poor choices, horrific lifestyles, and criminal behaviour, except to build more prisons to keep them where they belong.
ET:
What surprises me is that someone as articulate as you can have a reading comprehension problem.
Linear thinking: Punishment stops criminal behaviour. I said that this is not working infering that we need to try some alternatives. (“What? It’s not working? Hmm.”)
1. “… lockup is not the function of the legal system. The dealers are the ones locked up.” Huh?
2. Saying that addicts and alcoholics are not happy people is generalizing. I never claimed that this was “the cause” nor did I write that “all” of them were abused or mentally ill.
3. “…your suggestion that most of the addicts are mentally ill, and are on the street …”
I stated clearly that I was guessing; I don’t have any studies in front of me, and I’m writing this on my break so I’m not about to do any extensive research.
“The proportion of mental illness within a society can be kept within the capacity of the society to deal with this requirement for their support by various therapies, drugs etc.” And before the 1980’s it was. Is building more prisons a cheaper alternative?
“The proportion the society is worried about is not this low statistic but the drug use among the youth and the adults – the middle class…”
We should be worried about all of society. And how do you know what percentage of addicts are middle class, etc.? What difference does it make? Once they spend all their money they become part of this “low statistic”.
I agree, the drug emperors should be in jail. But why isn’t this happening? Certainly not because of a needle exchange or two.
Eventually most drug addicts can’t afford it. That’s when they resort to crime and that’s when the rest of us are affected.
anon- why are you on a blog? You’ve already told us that most blogs have the purpose only to inflame and, if the individual knew about the subject, they wouldn’t be on a blog. Therefore, why are you on a blog? Why aren’t you doing something constructive?
Your other logical problem is that you are assuming that IF one knew about (and understood) the program, THEN, one would be in favor of it. Not so. There are plenty of reports that reject the existence of any assumed benefits.
ET: Ahhh, tricky retort….however I didn’t say what you assert. I said that if anyone actually cared to solve the problem – rather than just talk about it – then they would have done research and would be contributing to the solution constructively. I will admit that I’ve spent time looking into the issue in consideration of both points of view, and I clearly fall on one side, but the difference is that I don’t have the time to advocate for any position, and I just came on here to point out how ridiculous the comparison of harm reduction programs to ‘drunk driving lanes’ was. That is, I came here to flame a pointless comparison, completely in line with my theory about blogs.
In my experience, the only thing that will be found on a blog is a lot of people appealing to ‘common sense’ and handwaving arguments, both of which are almost useless and nearly impossible to counter owing to the lack of any real, verifiable premises or facts. It is a subtle mix of opinion and argument, and coming on a blog to throw around wishy-washy ‘opinioments’ seems to me to be entirely an exercise in ideology.
Kate: “If stricter penalties don’t work, then why are the pro-drug advocates silent when tougher drunk driving laws are enacted?”
Because driving drunk manifestly puts others at risk while smoking a joint at home puts no one besides the user at risk (and a very small risk at that). As someone else once observed, the maximum harm from smoking marijuana comes from the legal system, not the drug.
I find it vaguely ironic that our society 1)allows women to kill their unborn children in the name of “controlling their own bodies”, 2) makes billions of dollars a year selling us alcohol, and 3) locks you up for smoking a joint.
I still don’t see why you are posting on this blog, anon. You’ve clearly stated that it’s a waste of time, that most posters don’t know what they are talking about..etc. So, leave.
iberia – You can’t change what you wrote. You didn’t suggest alternatives. You said “addicts and alcoholics are unhappy people’; that was your Major Premise..the rest followed within that axiom. Therefore, that is the basic cause. Logic 101.
And, since you now say that you don’t really know that much about the situation, that you haven’t done any research, that you are guessing – then, why are you posting?
This ‘low statistic’ doesn’t refer to the ‘low economic class’ but to the percentage of mentally ill. They obviously exist in any society, but, the proportion has to be low. Increase the proportion of disabled members of the society, ie, by addiction, and the society is in trouble.
Why aren’t the drug dealers in jail? Because of our leftist justice system, which defines them as ‘unhappy’, as ‘victims of their childhood’ or whatever.
kevinb- don’t trivialize this discussion. We are not discussing ‘smoking a joint’ but genuine addiction to both alcohol and hard drugs. Your ‘joint’ is a red herring. Stick to the topic.
KevinB – that wasn’t the question I asked.
To reiterate: if stricter penalites are an ineffective tool for curbing criminal drug use as the pro-drug lobbies says, then why do we buy into the argument that stricter penalties are effective at curbing criminal alcohol use?
Does that make it clearer for you?
And as far as the argument that “drug users harm only themselves” – tell that to two families in Yorkton today, One with a dead drug-dealing son, the other with a father facing sentencing for second degree murder.
ET:
Get a hold of yourself…I am just making some general comments here, not giving a detailed plan on how to solve the drug problem in our society.
I don’t deny that I wrote that drug addicts and alcoholics are unhappy people. I did not write that “therefore unhappiness is the cause of their addiction”. You need to take Logic 101 over again if that’s your conclusion.
Why are you posting? You criticize alternatives to incarceration as “linear logic” yet you don’t provide any alternatives either. It seems as though you just want more people to go to jail. Crime = time. So tell me again who is using linear logic?
We could have “driving a drunk lanes” on Friday & Saturday nights…the problem in Calgary is there’s way too few taxi drivers to make good use of the lanes to get all the drunks to take a back seat for safety.
KevinB, your “harmless” joint is part of a billion dollar industry in Canada. It’s an industry completely controlled by criminal organizations. Hells Angels, Outlaws, Mafia, and others. The profits from your joints buy guns, cocaine, meth, and more. People are dying on a daily basis because of the illegal drug trade. And your “harmless” joint, and the millions of other “harmless” joints being smoked in Canada are making criminals, thugs, and murderers rich and powerful. How many bullets do your joints buy I wonder?
The difference between drugs and alcohol is that alcohol is legal to purchase and the quality is regulated by the goverment.
KevinB:”…while smoking a joint at home…”
Let me finish the thought for you:
…felt like the cool thing to do…just before teenage buddy speeds off in his ’89 Honda Civic with your daughter after a touching evening of “at the movies with her friends”. In his anxious blue smoke driven haste, buddy badly misjudges an easy corner on McKnight Boulevard and gets to test Newton’s third law of motion on a rather sturdy light standard. As buddy rockets forward from his seat towards the windshield he’s struck first by the thought that it doesn’t happen this way on “Toopy and Binoo” (his favorite tv show with great hidden philosophical meaning which he regularly unlocked with weed power).
They’ve since removed most of the glass out of mutant buddy’s face and the cast is now off the wrist on his favorite toking hand. The hand kinda hurts and doesn’t work like it used to but it can still pinch a thick reefer good enough. He’s now resolved to smoke up even more often now – it blurs the scars and helps him laugh again like before. Even so, in buddy’s happily hazey consciousness there’s one road he knows never to travel down. It’s not McKnight Boulevard, after all he HAS to take that one to keep up his herb supply from his main man’s house a couple of blocks from the repaired light standard. No, it’s the one that leads past the cemetary gates that leads to the mound of freshy churned up dirt under which your daughter now eternally rests.
Whether or not it is a joint, an injected illegal drug(from a clean government supplied needle, of course) or booze, driving while under the influence is a crime and as Martin points out, it is NOT a victimless crime.
I somehow doubt that any of the “it’s just a little weed” crowd would board an airplane if they found out that the flight crew were doing a Cheech & Chong in the cockpit.
re:iberia “Mental health care funding was cut in the 80’s and a lot of borderline people were released into society to fend for themselves.”
..so it’s all due to those nasty cut-backs eh? I guess you’ve (conveniently) forgotten the relentless campaign by the left to close down almost all the residential facilities that used to provide safety and shelter to those who could not take care of themselves.
Well Mike, when this was happening I was living in Ontario and the Conservatives were the government of the day. If you want to think of them as left wing, go ahead. I don’t recall any right wing protests. Oh, you can also thank Mike Harris for putting the finishing touches on this issue. I was really impressed by the shanty towns that sprung up all over Toronto when he was in power.
I doubt that there are many people who think, any more, that doing dangerous things while under the influence of anything that tends to distract one’s attention from the dangerous task at hand is a good idea. Driving, if one’s not paying one’s full attention, is a dangerous thing.
But what about doing not dangerous things? As H. L. Mencken said, “The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind.”
Dean Martin was absolutely correct when he said, “If you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.” But so was Abraham Lincoln whe he said, “If we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall in to this vice. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and generosity.”
An astute German nobleman once noted, “No matter how rich you are, you can still only drink 16 or 17 liters of beer a day.” Just don’t over do it, for as Robert Heinlein noted, “Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors… and miss.”
First of all, the cops have been lying growing pot indoors for years. It is as safe as growing tomatoes. Ask any gardner. Don’t ask someone whose paycheck depends on you believing their story.
“Organized crime.” ROTFL. I’ve studies this industry extensively, and sorry,this is simply another myth perpetuated by the police, just like Texas Canucks’ comment about cannabis and flying.
It is calculated and designed to instill fear over a misunderstood plant that only has the interest of organized crime BECAUSE it’s illegal. And it was made illegal for racist reasons, not health reasons, so the entre prohibition is illegitimate.
Ah, and the latest cause celebre, pot causing that crash on Highway 7 between Perth and Carleton Place from a few years back? Total BS and spin, and the judge even found that mairjuana had nothing to do with the crash!
That doesn’t stop Murie and Lebreton are out there using those families and telling reporters that the driver “was high on pot” when he killed those poor teens. Bollocks. The road has a very poor safety record and the place where the accident occured is a known bad spot.
Sorry, but the moralists have lost the PR war on pot and are now willing to say just about anything to keep the prohibition going. There is even a shift going on in the Conservative Party.
If Harper wants his majority, he better come up with some new thinking about drugs, or else the 45% of people who think that the current situation is way, way too cop-centric will migrate to the other parties.
(BTW, some “high” ranking Conservatives should probably keep their puffing habits to themselves. things were a little skunky outside one of the Market’s finer establishments recently, where some bluecoats were refreshing themselves. My little hypocrite file on marijuana is growing thicker by the day. 🙂
”And as far as the argument that “drug users harm only themselves” – tell that to two families in Yorkton today, One with a dead drug-dealing son, the other with a father facing sentencing for second degree murder.”
The situation in Yorkton was not the result of drug use, it was the result of a father with access to a lethal weapon acting as judge, jury and executioner.
Draconian measures against driving under the influence are justified by the carnage on our highways.
There is nothing that would justify the hypocritical War on Some Drugs.
anonymous – you aren’t making any sense. In any of your statements.
1)Growing marijuana indoors is irrelevant.
2)Marijuana growth and sales are indeed tied to organized crime. Kindly provide proof that this is only a myth.
3)Kindly provide proof that making marijuana illegal was for ‘racist reasons’. Since it is illegal almost the world over – this would be an interesting explanation.
4)Most certainly, its use causes effects. Otherwise, why use it? Are you claiming that its use has NO effects on the individual? It is a psychoactive drug, which means that it alters brain function, resulting in changes in perception. Are you aware that driving a car requires that you NOT change your capacity to perceive reality/
5) Provide proof that 45% of Canadians favour marijuana legalization.
And don’t bother us with your fictional tales of ‘by the way’.
MaryJane – The situation in Yorkton WAS the result of drug use; the boyfriend was a pusher and drug dealer. The father could not bear to see his daughter in this guy’s power.
The war on drugs is valid. Do you know why? Because drugs change the ability of the indivdual to think, to work, to live – and affect their physical well-being. Someone ‘high’ on drugs is just as capable of deadly driving as someone high on alcohol. In addition, the drug user moves into a state of mind, energized, where they readily harm others, thinking themselves invincible. Never mind the drug gangs…as well.
ET- The situation was the result of the man thinking he could deal with a situation he didn’t like with extreme violence. Drugs were peripheral, at best.
The war on drugs is invalid because the one drug that most affects one’s ability to think, work and live, that puts the user into a state of mind where they harm others is socially-sanctioned alcohol, while much more benign substances are criminalized. Never mind the drug gangs, whose source of money and power is prohibition.
maryjane – your analogy is invalid. You are saying that IF and Only IF all mind-altering actions/ingestive substances are defined as illegal, then – unless this is done – none of them should be defined as illegal. The fallacy is to equate universality with validity.
I certainly agree that an excess of alcohol alters the brain function. A minimum (eg, one glass of wine) does not. I am not aware that there is any drug that is ‘benign’ and whose ingestion does not alter the mind to a dangerous degree. Furthermore, drugs are addictive in a chemical manner that alcohol is not.
The ingestion of the drug caffeine, which is done on a voluntary daily basis in small amounts by the vast majority of adult humans, does not alter the mind to a dangerous degree. On the other hand, if you’ve just had three double espressos in ten minutes, you shouldn’t be driving a car.
ET… your argument is invalid. You stated the war on drugs is valid because drugs change drugs change the ability of the individual to think, work and live and moves the user into a state of mind where they readily harm others. No drug fits that bill like alcohol, yet there is no war on alcohol.
There are many substances that are relatively benign and certainly less dangerous than booze. Alcohol is not addictive??? What are you smokin’??