I didn't sleep particularly well last night, with a lot of things running around my head that are usually way long ago put to bed. I don't particularly enjoy re-visiting all this.
1. I am not an expert on drug or alcohol use. I am an expert on my own personal experiences with it.
2. Old is in the eyes of the beholder. Again there is no 'one size fits all'. There are maintenance users and binge users and well off users and in (clean) and out (dirty) of jail users, and tough as nails stubborn users who make it well into late middle age, god only knows how. Yes a lot of people die from this. Mostly they die from activities supporting the drug use, the actual drug doesn't kill them.
3. Of course drug abusers/heavy drinkers miss life. That's kind of the point. Substance abuse is typically an effort to get everything to go away, or to go away oneself-same difference.
4. Being for or against drug use (I get tired of typing drug/alcohol, alcohol is just another drug) is a different subject from legal/illegal.
5. Of course legalizing would make things easier to obtain, a little. I think it's called a distinction without a difference. To use an analogy, we are living in New Orleans and there is a hurricane raging all day, every day. The levees have been breached but still stand. We spend a lot of effort shoring up the levees, reassuring each other that yes, we are soaking wet, but just think how wet we'd be if it weren't for these levees.
6% of the worlds GDP? Might as well face it folks, we are soaking wet. The water is just as high inside the levee as it is outside. The solution to that doesn't appear to be screwing around with the levees any more, that's just make work.
Anyway, regards to you all.
ARS |
