Because as everyone knows,
a) Alcoholism is a disease. You can’t cure a disease by throwing sick people in jail.
b) You can’t legislate morality!
Truly, drunk drivers need a better press agent. There’s no other way to explain how the same people who point to reductions in drunk driving rates through enforcement and stiffer sentencing, also argue that “jail is not the answer” for the criminal drug abuser.
Witness this odd defense of “safe injection sites” by Barbara Yaffe;
– Between June of 2007 and June of 2008, 222 users overdosed at the East Hastings clinic and received immediate intervention. Some of those users might otherwise have died in a back alley.
Just as drunks die, unmourned and unexcused, in alleys and ditches every day of the year. What’s so damned special about junkies that they merit the equivalent of a taxpayer funded drunk drivers’ lane with rescue teams at the ready?
“We’re just grateful he didn’t take anyone with him”.
Finally, glimmers of rational thought. Someone in government willing to voice the obvious – “It’s the crap they’re shooting directly into their veins, stupid.”
“The supervised injection site undercuts the ethic of medical practice and sets a debilitating example for all physicians and nurses, both present and future in Canada,” he scolded in an address to the Canadian Medical Association general council meeting in Montreal.
He called providing a safe injection site to drug addicts tantamount to offering palliative care to a patient with a treatable form of cancer. […]
“Is it true that supervised injections offer ‘positive health outcomes?’ I would not put it this way. Insite [Vancouver’s safe injection site] may slow the death spiral of a deadly drug habit, but it does not reverse it. I do not regard this as a positive health outcome.”
Indeed.
And fast forward 30 years to the moment when a Canadian Prime Minister stands before Parliament to issue an official apology – and restitution – to the “Survivors of Safe Injection Sites”. It will happen. One only hopes they bankrupt the Canadian Medical Association first.
And he’s not the only one. In Saskatchewan, SDA gets results!
I do believe, however, in compromise. Simply inform those doctors and junkie advocates so utterly convinced that projects such as Insite are worth funding, that the programs will continue – so long as the injection sites are relocated to their own primary residences.
Gated communities could benefit from a little social diversity, yes?
“It’s pure folly to try to attack it from the supply side.”
Any drugs in Saudi Arabia ??
Ron,
Damn right there are drugs in Saudi.
Several of my friends have worked there. It’s not the ex-pats who are doing it either. If you are even remotely connected as a Saudi citizen, you do whatever you like. It’s the peasants and non-citizens who are killed for it.
All this trouble can be sourced back to Liberal permissiveness over the past forty years.
Before that, tough love was the way things got done and it worked. Make people take responsibility for themselves or let them die.
We don’t need safe injection sites, we need safe dry-out sites. You might be surprised at how many druggies would like to dry out.
Ron in Kelowna, I agree, no drugs in Saudi Arabia, but absolutely no freedom either. I think there is a mid ground where we have a free society, but not one that tolerates dangerous zombies all over the place scaring people and spreading disease.
The Oh-so tolerant and caring left are the authors of today’s social horrors. They are the enablers.
I guess it’s better than having a competitive private sector job. Plus looking after the weak and stupid, makes them look smart and strong.
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
Ahh, the pious righteousness of it all. From the ignorant, to the Puritans of the Temperance Wagons, the difficulty of discussing drug policy with any moralist is revealed.
Faced with a free society, I guess it keeps cognitive dissonance down, don’t-cha know?
A valid (and scientificly proven) addiction treatment measure is to keep the patient alive until they ‘mature out’ – the terminus of use. Minimizing blood borne disease in them through needle exchange and safe injection sites is the idea. In the long run, this is less cost that having an 90% hepititis rate, or several hundred more HIV positive intravenuous users to deal with.
Besides, these people are going to do it anyway. How did the the whole ‘Just Say No’ campaign work out there? Huh? Any of you armchair Deities out there wave your magic hand and stop people from using substances to alter conciousness? No?
And better face up to it, alcohol is the most destructive recreational drug in terms of social and economic harm. Period.
Yet I suppose hipocrisy is always present, especially among the ‘conservatives’ here. Y’all ain’t conservative, you’re passing Puritans desperately needing to control as you see fit. Especially with some of the spit flecked rants above.
You’re a bunch of fakes.
I think a lot of people have a fundimental misunderstanding about ‘junkies’ which makes Liberal people far too sympathetic and Conservative people far to cold hearted.
A lot of these hard-drug users had amazingly abusive childhoods and were pretty broken children that looked for the ‘oblivion’ provided by drugs at a very young age. Generally speaking, their awful childhood provides them with very little emotional maturity or empathy and the ‘hunger’ from drug abuse pushes people to break just about any personal boundry they have.
As ‘Junkies’ lose their ability to generate the income they need to feed their adiction (and as their addiction needs greater ammounts of money to be fed) they generally progress downwards in what they’re willing to do to generate the necessary income. As long as they remain an addict (which is as long as they have access to drugs and don’t face their demons) they will fall further and further, and it is only a matter of time before they walk into a Subway and crush an 18 year old woman’s head to get the $20 that is in the cash register; it may (in fact) end up being your daughter’s, sister’s or neice’s head that is crushed for petty cash.
Making a drug illegal or fighting a drug war will do nothing to stop these junkies from existing, and will only drive up the price of the drugs which will progress them into worse crime earlier.
At the same time, funding these drug users addiction (and not allowing over-doses and jail to lower the population of junkies) will only lead to an ever growing population of junkies who will place more demand on your public service then it can supply; the ‘Junkies’ which can not have their needs met will eventually go down the path that other ‘Junkies’ have followed which ends with jail or an overdose.
The only solution to actually fix this problem is to stop producing broken children.
I retract. Everyone here is a bunch of fakes except for NoOne, who appears to have some action happening between the ‘ol ears.
Hence a war on drugs is a war by a nation on its’ own people. Drug use is a social and health care issue. Not a criminal one.
Anyone want to guess the great conservative thinker who said that? Any of you know? Nah, conservative thought won’t strike many of you in your lifetimes.
hardboiled
You’re kind of a twit, aren’t you?
You can be against making drugs illegal (the libertarian argument) and against injection sites at the same time.
It’s been known a lot longer than your foolish pseudo-scientific sociologist BS that a drunk or druggie most often needs to hit “rock bottom” before they are in a sad enough state that the discomfort of change is outweighed by the discomfort of continued addiction.
Anything that prevents an addict from hitting rock bottom enables them to continue their addiction. When a family member continues to “enable” of the individual addict, the shrinks, sociologists and social workers decry this as a bad thing but when the state “enables” millions, it’s sound public policy.
And alcohol is only more damaging due to numbers. A crack addict does more damage than a drunk. There just isn’t as many of them.
It’s you and your hypocritical idiocy that show “cognitive dissonance.” Take your attitude and put it in a pipe and smoke it.
Here’s a stat for you Iberia..in just one year, without hundreds of thousands of dollars in life saving help ,over 200 people would be dead from just one clinic!..
That is over twice the number of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 6 year period of war, and the enemy is armed with modern weapons!
What about the other clinics? What would the total be if we added them all up?
What would the death toll be if there were no intervention? 1500+ a year?..more?
They are not safe injection sites, they are houses of horrors where the taxpayer gets to be part of an experiment in which they witness a race to see who will win the game first, the drugs or the health care workers , who really only postpone the inevitable.
Is the CMA collectively on drugs themselves? Whatever happened to the oath of ‘do no harm’? Allowing people to inject poisons into their veins in a controlled environment smacks of abuse, and should not be tolerated.
Warwick – cite your arguments rather than making them up. While looking them up, you’ll learn something.
Any first year psych text.
And yours?
It’s quite amusing to see lberia and hardboiled rail about their perceived one size fits all view of conservative/right wing thought, all the while accusing them of being bigots/prejudiced.
Delicious irony and quite pathetic all at the same time.
NoOne’s suggestion of the basic cause of drug addiction to be ‘abusive childhoods’ is naive. It’s similar to the equally naive supposition that poverty is the root cause of crime.
The naivete of this focus on an abusive childhood is that it assumes that there is only one way to deal with an abusive past: drugs. Making a positive life for yourself as an adult is a far better choice. And it is a choice. Admittedly, declaring that one CAN make choices, would unemploy most of the social services bureaucrats who make a very nice salary and benefits, feeding off their assumptions about families and psychology.
This equally ignores that many drug addicts move into drugs because of wealth (all those pop stars, models and etc); because of boredom and feelings of insecurity which have nothing to do with childhood abuse – and – the fact that the drugs are chemically addictive. Once you are in, you are trapped within the addiction. Therefore, the original spurious ’cause’ is almost irrelevant.
hardboiled – drug use is a criminal issue. Why? Because the use of the drugs is addictive. Therefore, once you, the dealer, make your population addicted to your product, they MUST purchase it. Is Tim Horton’s addictive? Krispy Kreme donuts? If your product is addictive, then, you attempt to maintain a monopolistic control over supply and delivery. That makes you very wealthy.
Is the CMA collectively on drugs themselves? Whatever happened to the oath of ‘do no harm’? Allowing people to inject poisons into their veins in a controlled environment smacks of abuse, and should not be tolerated. Posted by: Kursk at August 21, 2008 1:04 PM
Somehow, I trust a doctor rather than some foaming at the mouth moralist on their way to a temperance rally. Or a politician.
Doctors come just a little higher on my list of trust factor than either of those.
Better grab your tamborine Kursk, get on’er.
And hey Warwick – cite away. From what I recall from 1st year psych, it was an easy A with multiple choice all the way through. Didn’t you learn how to cite references properly?
Gritgrinder
What about the burden on our commie-care system?
This is the argument time and time again used to restrict our personal rights and choices. It is not your body to do with what you like, all of Canadian society has a stake in your well-being.
If your product is addictive, then, you attempt to maintain a monopolistic control over supply and delivery. That makes you very wealthy. Posted by: ET at August 21, 2008 1:18 PM
You’re a smart person ET. By your post, naturally, you can reconcile your argument to the following four statements:
Cigarettes are legal because…..
Contin class pharmaceuticals are legal because….
Marijuana is illegal because….
Harm reduction for addicts is not an applicable strategy because…
I found the comment here:
http://www.freedominion.com.pa/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1217746#1217746
interesting…
Singapore’s system works very well. They moved to a Long Term Inprisonment (LTI) strategy in the early 1990s.
Traffiking gets the same penalty as 1st degree murder — in Singapore, that is death by hanging. Cheaper than life in prison, but either will do.
Addicts get mandatory rehab — usually something like 4 years, sometimes longer. The recidivism rate for addicts is
Hardboiled,
If you are too stupid and uneducated that you haven’t already learned the concept of the “enabler” prior to spouting off your ignorance of the subject, I really have nothing to offer you.
If you are too lazy to spend 15 seconds googling it for the laymans version, I’m not doing your work for you.
Lastly, don’t demand citations when any essay on the topic wouldn’t require them as the information is so basic it’s taken as a given. It’s like demanding cites for Supply and Demand in eco. If you haven’t figured that out, you need to find another subject you are capable of understanding.
Especially when you offered none yourself on your own claims. In other words, put up yourself before you demand it of others.
And if you remember taking psych it’s too bad you didn’t learn anything. I’d demand your money back – you got cheated. All psych classed are easy A’s. That is why people use them as their electives (that and psych is where the girls were…)
“The only solution to actually fix this problem is to stop producing broken children.”
(This would make Gore, Suzuki and uncle Moe very happy)
I have met many many victims of drugs who came from balanced and well educated families. Some wealthy ones too going to private school.
Hard drugs addiction is not mostly confined to the abused, unloved or less fortunate. That’s a myth.
What is true in your analysis is that the visible gutter junkies in back alleys will mostly be the ones you describe because as a head start they had nothing. Nothing includes no pride and nothing to look forward too including wealth…They then just slide down and end up in the gutter which they were already close to being in anyway. It takes lots of money to support an expensive habit and it’s only expensive because it’s illegal.
How do you explain Keith Richards? Who has been a world champion heroin user for decades. During such time he was still able to create many immortal rock and roll guitar riffs. How about Ozzy Osbourne, Steven Tyler (Aerosmith), Whitney Houston?
Edgar Allan Poe was a well known opium addict most of his writing life. His literature is immortal.
They all had or still have a chance because they are/were rich and more so they had or have something to look forward to or a motivator. Steven Tyler in the early eighties pulled himself out alone. He was almost out of money, alone and paranoid in a slumb hotel on a seedy side of NYC…He came close but he made it back up. Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jimmy Hendrix, John Belushi(Was high on coke during SNL) Heath Ledger were not so lucky.
Like anything in life, some are luckier than others, stronger than others, smarter than others.
Want me to start a list of alcoolics who did not end in a back alley?
– My uncle (Died a millionaire)
– W.C. Fields (Died broke but famous)
– Dean Martin (Was drunk on national TV entertaining millions)
And the list goes on.
We are all responsible for our actions.
Except in the LPC’s Red Book.
Except in Canada.
The bleeding hearts use compassion as a cover. In reality they do not want the problem fixed. Thousands of their ilk would be out of work.
‘The Road To Hell’ by Julian Sher & William Marsden shows just who is supplying the drugs that destroy young lives and cause all the problems above. The Angels and the do-gooders.
The sea ports are the key. Why are they porous ? Because some want them to be. Why ? Employment for thousands of social engineers, free spiriters, the latte crowd and HA.
Lastly, don’t demand citations when any essay on the topic wouldn’t require them as the information is so basic it’s taken as a given. It’s like demanding cites for Supply and Demand in eco. Posted by: Warwick at August 21, 2008 1:27 PM
Guess things we all ‘know’ to be true, don’t ever need be examined huh Warwick? Maybe repeating something enough times will eventually make it true huh?
And btw, economics and psychology are not sciences Warwick. They are humanities. Best to stick to science. You’re starting to sound like the AGW crowd – they just KNOW the planet is doomed….
hardboiled – drug use is a criminal issue. Why? Because the use of the drugs is addictive.
Not it’s not. It’s a criminal issue because of a bad law, just as prohibition, which organized crime loved, was a bad law and eventually rescinded.
However, as a flexible non-doctrinaire libertarian, I’m open to forced de-tox as a kind of civil defence measure. And I’m sure that 99% of the “clients” and their loved ones would be extremely appreciative of the intervention.
But obviously only in cases where the addiction causes civil disorder and breakdown. If you have legally-obtained means to support your addiction, no problem.
and to your request….
“…public health approach to the problem of illicit drug use and addiction views the problem not as a phenomenon caused by individual psychological (or moral) factors but rather as one causing extensive social problems and threatening public health. Harm reduction theory reflects this attitude and goes a step further, holding that many of the most destructive consequences and refractory problems of illicit drug use are not the results of the drugs per se, but rather of drug policies, i.e., the prohibition of drug use and the criminalization of the drug user. A wide range of individual, social, and cultural factors determine patterns of drug use (from personal curiosity and peer pressure to social and economic deprivation, psychopathology and, possibly, genetic factors). But because of the continued availability and use of increasingly potent drugs, the harm reduction approach addresses the drug problem by altering drug control policies, not the drugs themselves–and certainly not human nature. New and m ore pragmatic drug policies can be powerful tools for minimizing the increasingly adverse consequences associated with the worldwide availability of psychoactive drugs. (1-4)
….
“In a society so zealously (and quixotically) dedicated to being “drug free,” there has been little room for compromise and the ideological dispute over needle exchange programs still rages…
….
http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/tlcdruck.cfm
….
‘Shoot, shovel, and shut up’ is not an appropriate public policy response to intravenous drug use. Because the next fashionable cause may beget the same policy.
Freedom in a society is exactly that: free. Free to succeed, free to be mediocre, or free to crash and burn in a pile of human garbage.
Freedom gives us returns, warts and all. And abandoning certain citizens, by not engaging in best practices based upon science, is the realm of the barbarian: selective morality, targetted behaviors, and rigid orthodoxy.
Starts to sound alot like radical Islam, don’t it?
And the repudiation of the concept of freedom itself.
Anybody seen my Soma?
You know this one-liner would have worked better if some drug company hadn’t actually used Soma as a brand name.
Hardboiled, you think the addiction effect of injectable opiates and cigarettes is equivalent?
You think the harm to the user is equivalent?
Nice straw man you got there. They are as much alike as a bee sting and the bite of a black widow spider. Both are poisonous.
We have been dealing with these types of addictive drugs maybe 150 years here in the West. There are cultures in the world which have been coping with opium and other things much longer. China and India are examples.
You know how the treat addicts in India and China? An opium smoker is treated as dead by his family. He is hounded out of public places by everyone, like a leper. He is not given charity. He is left to die like a dog. The life expectancy of an opium addict is short. As in months. In S. America much the same applies to those who like the coca leaves a little too much.
People in those cultures know from painful history the effects of opiates on people. This has been their adjustment to the problem.
Heroin and cocaine are to opium and coca as beer is to whiskey. The distilled stuff when abused is far more rapid in its destruction of the abuser. You want to spend money helping kids kill themselves with this crap, you go ahead. Me, I’d rather spend it on a nice big jail to dry the stupid b@stards out in for a couple years.
That way they can be alive to hate my guts and call me a square.
Hardboiled, you think the addiction effect of injectable opiates and cigarettes is equivalent? Posted by: The Phantom at August 21, 2008 2:31 PM
Not at all. I was challenging a previous poster, who said “drug use is a criminal issue. Why? Because the use of the drugs is addictive”.
I asked about tobacco to challenge that statement, pointing out the hipocrisy and contradiction within current drug laws, whether it be marijuana or simple policy.
I respect ET, and wanted to add to discussion.
Actually, I live at Ground Zero. Right near the DTES, and I advocate injection sites. I also advocate just giving them the drugs. So do most of the people in my neighbourhood – yuppies who probably make more money and pay more taxes than you btw.
You know why? Cuz junkies are going to get the drugs anyway. And they’re going to buy them from criminals using my effening laptop. In the process, they’ll demean themselves through prostitution, and thieving, thus re-enforcing their belief that they need drugs in order to live with themselves.
Don’t get me wrong… I’d also spend money on treatment facilities, and crack down on crime and public disorder, but the current approach doesn’t work.
What we need is a little bit more carrot, and a little bit more stick. Both the left and the right are going to have to accept this before we can solve the problem.
I just love all the druggy lovers who say no rules, let everyone do what they want yadda, yadda, yadda.
But let the government set up a druggy rehab house beside where they live and they are Mach 1 Apoplectic before clearing the Tower. Can’t have that !!
Kinda like the eco-hypocrites who prevent wind or solar power facilities where they live.
Honestly, what torture logic has to endure in the heads of these people.
One idiot at the Globe site, thinking himself clever, said, “How exactly does In-Site encourage drug use? Does a hospital encourage broken legs?”
Well, no. You see, people go to the hospital to get their broken legs fixed, whereas people go to Insite to have their legs broken, metaphorically speaking, again and again and again.
You have to be an idiot to support Safe Injection Sites, to imagine that there’s something “safe” about injecting addictive poison into your blood.
hardboiled
What “science” is responsible for explaining human behavior? Oh, right, that isn’t science’s job.
And I don’t think I should have to comment on your lack of understanding between concepts which are too basic for citation and what are old wives tales.
And I await your own “proof” which you so far haven’t offered while condescending to those who fail to waste their time “Citing” scientific unknowns such as which direction the sun rises.
Socialist moonbats, forever sucking at the public teat, NEVER advocate tough love: That would cut them off THEIR addiction, which is providing care for chronically untreatable parasites–made “untreatable” by the leftie politicians’ and social/public health workers’ fawning, enabling policies. It’s cash for life for the socialist bureaucrats.
I’m totally with Tony Clement, and keep meaning to write him to give him support. (Write him at:
Clement.Tony@parl.gc.ca)
The moonbats and their allies in the MSM will do everything they can to paint Clement as a mean, unfeeling, CONSERVATIVE stuffed shirt when all he’s doing is pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes and that Shoot-Up Clinics simply prolong the long, slow suicide–now government-assisted (isn’t there a law against this?)–of their users.
I think it’s time for some Orwell wannabe to write a book called “2008.”
batb,
I don’t have a problem with funding for rehab as this would be “hand-up” help rather than a prolonging of the problem.
Making it easier for an addict to keep using is counter-productive.
I live close to ground zero,about a thirty minute walk.We are the target of choice for junkies,property crime is inevitable.But being robbed at knife point by a couple of junkies who seemed to enjoy the experience a little too much to the point that had my wife and I wondering if this is THE DAY has left me a little jaded.I grew up in a welfare drug infested district in Montreal,and having lost my way as a result of this fact I became one of these people,homeless and addicted,willing to do almost anything to get a fix. I had to get out and thank god I knew this or I would be dead or one of the walking dead,trying to figure out where my next fix was coming from.Had I had access to injection sites I would have set up camp right on the spot,instead I joined the army for ten years,got my head straight,finished high school,have worked and paid taxes for the last twenty years for the same employer and through some lucky and wise investment ,live comfortably.I think injection sites make it too easy for the addict to stay addicted,and having my wife’s and my life threatened while out for a walk in daylight no less leaves me feeling not so charitable.
Rehab is OK with me too. Afterall, anyone with an addiction needs help–but not the kind of help the moonbat do-gooders are supporting in the “safe (sic) injection sites.”
What’s the difference between doing a Kevorkian at someone’s bedside and slowly killing them every time they shoot up with heroin? Both are assisted suicides, IMO, and I thought there was a law against this in Canada.
“Safe” injection sites aren’t safe in the same way that “safe” sex–“just use a condom”–isn’t safe.
It’s time we say what we mean and mean what we say. Lives are lost otherwise.
“Caroline Bennett, Liberal health critic or something, is an MD, believe it or not, who thinks shoot-up sites are the way to go. She also thinks having our Health care delivered by private clinics using our health card is wrong.”
Libspeak- Universal Healthcare
Actual Meaning- Only unionized government employees are capable.
“The moonbats and their allies in the MSM will do everything they can to paint Clement as a mean, unfeeling, CONSERVATIVE stuffed shirt when all he’s doing is pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes and that Shoot-Up Clinics simply prolong the long, slow suicide–now government-assisted (isn’t there a law against this?)–of their users”
Don’t worry, junkies don’t vote and socialists always vote Left. So nothing really changed for the Conservatives today. No better. No worst.
hardboiled, there is no comparison between the use of drugs and the use of tobacco. Yes, both are addictive, though hardly of the same degree. But there are other variables than ‘addiction’ to consider.
Drug use destroys your capacity to think. and not just during the time it’s in your system, but permanently. Tobacco use doesn’t do that.
me no dhimmi – I maintain that drug use is a criminal offense, for several reasons.
The first is that it removes the individual from participating in society as a responsible and accountable individual. That’s because it destroys the mind.
The second is because, since it is addictive as well as mentally destructive, this mindless individual then becomes the ward of society; we taxpayers have to support them. The individual is incapable of constructive work in the society. A society can only afford to support a small ratio of non-contributing members.
The third is, because it is addictive, it moves the drug into being a ‘necessity’. Since the individual is mentally destroyed, they cannot themselves work and provide for their own drugs. They resort to crime – everything from theft to prostitution.
So, on three factors – this individual is not only unable to contribute to society, but requires constant care by the society, and in addition, harms individuals and businesses of that society. That’s why I consider it a criminal issue rather than an individual libertarian – do what you want – issue. Because choosing to take drugs isn’t confined to you, but involves many other members of the society in harmful ways.
ET,
What is the difference between weed and alcohol and explain why one should be illegal while the other is not.
you make a choice and it’s a bad one. tough shit.
I didn’t say “Hard-Drug” users, I said “Junkies” and there is a difference …
The ‘Well Adjusted’ middle-class kids who get caught up in drugs typically hit their own personal ‘Rock-Bottom’ well before they’re living on the street and haning around a safe-drug-injection site.
ET, lots of people takes lots of drugs, and live quite normal lives. I’m quite sure it’s not good for them, but then again neither is not exercising, eating junk food as a staple, and freaking out about Dubya every five minutes.
Some drugs, like crystal meth, rock cocaine and I’m sure many others, manifest themselves quickly in an addiction, which absolutely ruins their lives.
I remember one of my poli sci profs talking about opiates in society while discussing Marx’s views about religion. He said opiates, obviously defined loosely, could include having a VCR.
Maybe that’s where the term “Crackberry” comes in.
When MADD came into the picture, drunk driving became a target of politically correct demonization. Thus, logic and critical thinking goes straight out the window.
A very lovely local woman I knew divorced her wealthy husband and took up with a real estate guy, but bucks up, living in the wilds of central Nebraska. Turns out he was dealing meth to maintain cash flow. She got hooked and the rest is history. Pictures in the local paper [front page, how humiliating] showed a woman that appeared to be her grandmother. When I knew her, she ran five miles every morning. Now, I doubt she could cross the street on her own.
What I want to know is why Americans feel the need to pursue that lifestyle? Many people experiment when they’re young, but what keeps so many consuming drugs to the extent police officers and government officials are being slain in Colombia and Mexico? It is a tragedy we need to solve.
shamrock – I don’t think that taking drugs is in any manner comparable to eating junk food or not exercising. Neither of the latter are addictive and it is your choice to act in such a manner.
Nor is it a trivial phase during one’s teens.
If it were either, it wouldn’t be the enormously lucrative economy that it is. Lucrative, that is, for the sellers. Disastrous to those who are addicted and to those who must support and look after addicts.
warwick – by ‘weed’ I presume you mean marijuana. What’s the difference between its use and alcohol use? Not much, and ingestion of both to the extent that you cannot think and be responsible is, in my view, a criminal act. It’s the result that I am concerned about. Can you, as an adult, behave as a responsible person? Yes or No.
The hard drugs that engender deep addictive dependency are pure criminal acts, in selling and using.
ET, my point was that many people who, for instance, smoke pot, are far more healthy than “clean living” people who eat poorly and don’t exercise.
Habits and addictions are not the same thing, but they share characteristics. Lots of people have harmful habits not related to drug use.
I thought I was clear that I was not talking about the hard drugs – heroin, crack/cocaine, meth, etc.
I support the legalization of marijuana – controlled, licensed and taxed by government – for adults. They should be subject to the same constraints as alcohol – no driving. But, to test people for use, rather than impairment, as the police do now, is dead wrong.
If we take marijuana off the grid of enforcement (ie-deploy law enforcement towards hard drugs, and treat addiction as a medical issue), that would be a good thing, IMO. Then the social cost of smoking marijuana could be recovered through the tax system. Instead, people go to pushers who introduce them to harder stuff. IOW, marijuana is a gateway drug all right – to pushers to harder drugs.
Too bad you missed the nuances of my post – oh well, I thought it was quite clear. Perhaps you should read my posts in more detail before commenting – that would be a good thing.
BTW, I don’t think it’s up to you to define “responsible behaviour.” You have some strong opinions that some object to (though I think you have a valid right to air them). Some of them might decide that is not “responsible behaviour.”
As a pharmacist I was taught that all drugs have a benefit and all can be toxic. Dose and delivery is what makes the difference. Nicotine appears to prevent Parkinson’s disease and maybe Crohn’s disease. Marijuana increases the risk of schizophrenia but prevents nausea, etc, etc
Heroin and cocaine take very small doses and if given intravenously or smoked cause a massive effect in the brain very quickly in less than 5 minutes. This makes it relatively easy to get habituated then addicted. This is why they are illegal while the related drugs morphine and Ritalin are not, though you can of course get habituated and even addicted with those. But it takes more.
Psychiatrists I work with think that addiction is a matter of will; that is the drug abuse takes away free will. I think this is the paradigm many in health care and social work believe. I for one, think that is an illusion. Otherwise no junkie or alcoholic would ever recover.
As for testing for marijuana in drivers (like for alcohol) can’t yet be done. It’s because a joint smoked a week or more ago shows up in the urine and can’t be associated at the time of your arrest.
WHY NO SAFE INJECTION IN REGINA?
BECAUSE THE VOLUME OF HEROIN IN THE CITY IS MINISCULE COMPARED TO HONGCOUVER. I WONDER IF IMMIGRATION MIGHT ACCEPT SOME RESPONSIBILITY HERE.
OOPS DID I SAY THE “R” WORD? SORRY, SO SORRY. I’M SORRY.
Valencia, there was a recent change in law that allows police to force you to submit a blood sample to test for marijuana, if officer believes you are impaired by the drug. If you refuse to submit, then you will receive a $1000 fine, and still be charged with impaired driving.
The rub is that marijuana is illegal, so police think that justifies this action. Obviously, this test cannot prove impairment beyond a reasonable doubt, since marijuana can be detected at least 30 days after ingestion.
How this will survive a Charter challenge is unclear to me.
BTW, marijuana is NOT addictive, it is, however, habit forming.
Islam is the best solution for this problems
1) never made or produce the alchole
2) never allow selling alchol
3) Never allow drinking any alchol for all ages
4) then do not worry about drink and drive issure
because you are ban to drinking it for all the time.
when alchol cause your bain act different and taht time you are nto You who act normal it is drunk person therefore this is danger chemicla you are drinking
when red light is ON you can not pass it saying for your execuses
you can creat alchol flavor and use some kind of relax chemical or tea inmix wiht it or some engery to it but not made you drunk
druge and drinking is go bck to mental ill ness and destroy your cell brain
after you get old if you eat little drinking still it affect your body in old age or if you drunk problems in sooner time before you get old in young age
I always tell myself when i saw old men and woman with too many wrinkdle tehy must be drinking so much alchol swhen they were young
alchol affect skin and brain and behviour
then why you are not stop drinking like stop smokcing
some goverment rules is funny I went to shell gas station and I saw they cover the section of smoking to not motive peopel buy the cigar
i told them why are fool yourself then stop selling cigar in all hte time not hide it but resolve your problmes
There is not benefit of doing alchol all those adulty is affect of drunking all rapesis becaue of drinkign problmes abuse woman abuse is cause of drinking problems
I think government must stop the alchol and replace it with similar taste aclhol flavor with not affect of alchol in it. it save life of too many people
and those are mental illness to help them
I have notice from time to time, the people from the left switch over to the right. Dennis Miller is one example, David Horowitz is another. I know of several in my personal life. Yet, I have never met a conservative who became a liberal.
Why is that?
I remember when I was young, everyone was a liberal, but now many of those people are conservative.
Perhaps it has something to do with actually growing up. Perhaps Liberals are simply a bunch of kids who refuse to grow up.
Makes sense.