<1. legalize all (yes, all) drugs of abuse. Most policemen I've talked to agree with me (off the record). >
Good post Jacob.
This is the crux <drug users are enmeshed in a Drug Culture, a Drug Community, and they will slide back into drug use, unless they live in an UnDrug Community that constantly reinforces an UnDrug Culture. >
My inexpert opinion is that it's cool stuff to use drugs. Coffee has taken off in Latteland [nee Auckland] over the past decade or two. NZ used to be a tea culture. American coffee culture has come in, overlaid with fancy pants variations on the theme - coffee menus are as long as the food menus now.
When dope was legal, hardly anyone used it. It became really cool to be dopey in the 1960s. The penalties weren't a big deal and gave it hipness. Now, Dak is the deal! Huge crops are grown. Police, courts and prisons are wasting time on it. Criminals are thieving to pay for it. It's a huge industry in NZ.
Legalize the whole lot and take the wind out of its sails.
When people used to go to pot, they were looked down on as failures. It wasn't cool to be dopey. Now, in some cultures, it is part of the wallpaper and will stay that way because it's the cashflow driver. Money talks! While the money flows, the culture will thrive.
Now we have the dopey United Nations going on about legalization in Europe. How absurd is that? nzherald.co.nz
We have countries around the world at war or about to go to war and they are worrying about a subculture based on dope which hurts only the person sucking it in [or eating it in muffins in coffeehouses in Holland].
All the people in the UN who mention dope, or other words meaning the same thing, should be fired and told to get a real job. As Boris Yeltsin said, "Presidents don't do chickens" and the UN should not do dope.
Same thing with cocaine. It's the money talking! The money creates a culture. Coca Cola used to contain cocaine or coca bean extract or something. There's a huge money flow in the Coca Cola culture and the coke culture and while money flows, the culture will exist.
Legalize the stuff and the cash flow will crash and so will the culture and the coolness level. Hip dudes won't want to be seen dead with dope or coke filling their head. Sure, the arty cultures short of money will continue to use drugs - as they always did - to set themselves apart from the normal bourgeois types.
I have wondered before whether opium imports to the USA aren't an excellent vector for transmission of NUKES!! Buried inside a stack of bags of cocaine, which would act as decoy and allow bribed customs people to allow it in - they'd never allow in a nuke, even with payment, but opium is okay for suitable payment.
The main, overall factor in the whole thing is self-determination. States are suffocating individuals. Drugs are a way of being independent in a non-violent way. Free will matters to people. Modern societies are smothering nanny-states, ordering every last detail of our lives including what we are allowed to ingest. No wonder people become defiant and join the anti-establishment drug culture. I'm tempted to do it myself.
Leave people alone to run their lives how they want to. If they want to suck garden rubbish, or drink their own urine, leave them alone!
Mqurice
PS: The USA is the problem here because they are driving the War on Drugs. They should forget about it. |
