dbd33

Get Jerry Garcia to address the House?

Refugee from Happyland

You seem like a reasonable man, however you have kind of set your self up here as the resident cop, this attitude that unless you've walked in my shoes, is a bit tedious. Cops are not rounded up to do service, that is their choice, and far too many are there for the perks and pension.
I was a steel fixer for 15 years, probably a more dangerous job, but I never recalled my colleagues expecting kudos for risking their lives to house people.
The police are puppets of the politicians and the fault for all this lies politically.

Your views are typical of the states attitude, and the problem, that is that it is a "Drug problem" and drugs are evil. The focus should be why people feel the need to do this to their brains and blot out reality with drugs.
Trust me anyone who is predisposed to alter their mind state will find something to get high with, be it glue or meth.
People in North America over eat and drive dangerously we never refer to cars and food as evil
Any addict in the later stages of addiction is a mess, whatever their poison.
Alcoholics are generally the hardest to manage,
A foot note for incoming brits I would say the nightly carnage on UK streets after closing time is far more menacing than the recent shootings here.

Alan2005

Can't argue with that

dbd33

But some drugs are evil. A person who feels the need to blot out reality might drink ten mojitos and pass out. The same person might blast on a bong for a couple of hours. In either case, the person might reconsider life in the morning and go on, more or less unaffected. If the same person had tried meth or crack, the chances are they'd be ****ed.


An intelligent drugs policy isn't a legalise everything policy any more than it's a ban everything policy.

Alan2005

I'd still legalize the lot - the problem with drawing lines is that where you do it tends to be arbitrary. Tho I agree that it should be tried on a few first to see the effect - somehow I doubt that we'd see the end of civilization as we know it.

dboy

apology accepted, thanks. Meth, crack and heroin are, for the most part, extremely harmful and highly addictive, much more so than booze, and in a more socially destructive way. I think very strong arguments can be made for pot, but not for hard drugs. Perhaps some so called recreational drugs, like ecstasy might be regulated, but what of meth, and crack cocaine? Where is the line drawn? I don't pretend to have all the answers and I'n certainly open to persuasion, i just think the matter is overly complex and many people try to simplify the matter.

It true that a lot of people don't use booze appropriately, but the vast majority do. I can't say the same for most that use of hard drugs.

Refugee from Happyland

Are you kidding me, meth is the drug of choice of Truckers who need to maximise awake time. I worked with guys as high as a kite but still able to function, really cant say the same for drink and the weed
More work hours are lost through drink abuse and the shenanigans that prevail

Alan2005

A number of the social consequences of hard drugs are due to the illegality of them. I remember reading that over 90% of burglary in the UK was committed by a relatively small number of herion addicts. It would have been better just to give them free drugs.

That's kind of my point - why bother with a line. My thinking is that if the risks are known and it harms no-one else then why not allow it - people can then judge for themselves.

dboy

I can't entirely disagree with your view point. And yes many jobs are physically more dangerous the policing. From what I've seen (and personally experienced after more than one break down) policing and other emergency response professions, are mentally more harmful. This is a 'danger' that people don't seem to really appreciate.

Yes were are puppets in a sense, although i usually describe us as 'judicial caretakers.' We are after all civil servants. Policing is highly politicized and a lot of policing, which is for the most part useless, is there to reassure the voters, such as cops on atv's riding up and down kits beach- what a joke.

"The focus should be why people feel the need to do this to their brains and blot out reality with drugs".-

Yes this is the very nature of the problem, and is what i mean by drugs being a social disease.

I was certainly in an altered state last night after more than a few wobbly pops at the UB40 concert.

Yes street level alcohol abuse is no where near the same problem here as in the uk.

As previously stated, i have no idea what the solution is and i dare say that there is no simple soloution.

Alan2005

Spent a few years in Bangkok - it was widely accepted that truckers were all on yaa baa (meth amphetamine) to keep themselves awake

dboy

Crytal meth is a more pure form of traditional meth and much more harmful and addictive.

The whole role of drugs in society is ****ed up. Valium and Ritalin are prescribed to calm people, anti-depression drugs to change moods, there was a news article not long ago where college kids were able to get prescriptions for drugs to deal with the stress of college life so they could stay awake and study (i forget the drug's name).

We live an age where we take the easy way out of problems, either throwing money at them or prescribing drugs which merely mask problems, rather than dealing with them.

I'm sure my ex-wife was addicted to pain killers, but wouldn't admit it.

Drugs are drugs at the end of the day i guess. I feel very strongly, however, that handing out happy pills to prevent crime is somehow immoral, and as is the case with anti depression medication, is not dealing with the real issues. I also feel the same about handing out legally prescribed mood altering pills.


As i've said, these are very complex issues.

dboy

[QUOTE=Alan2005;7474703]A number of the social consequences of hard drugs are due to the illegality of them. I remember reading that over 90% of burglary in the UK was committed by a relatively small number of herion addicts. It would have been better just to give them free drugs.


Yes you are right, this is a widely held view in policing. I remember when I worked Patrol we would get a rash of break and enters as many as 2 or 3 a day in a certain residential area. When we id the suspect and he was locked up the rate would drop to zero.

two thirds of all crime is drug related.

Here is a post of mine from another similar thread. It to do with a sociological perspective of crime:

In the modern society we seem to be attached at the hip with crime, almost a symbiotic relationship of sorts exists. Our economy is plugged into crime. Consider if you will:

A drug addict breaks into a car, smashing the window looking for something of value to steal. Finds nothing. The owner pays 300 dollars to get his window replaced. The auto glass repair business is prospering since half of his business is due to thefts from auto.

The addict now looks for a more promising target. Someone's house. He kicks open the door, ignores the alarm and steals a tv and some other items. He leaves and pawns the stuff and buys drugs. The pawn shop sells the tv to someone who has saved more than half the price over new and uses the extra money to put towards the rent. The person he buys the drugs from uses the money to buy groceries and puts some towards his rent and puts gas in his car and pays his cell phone bill that he uses to sell drugs. The dealer bought his supply from a supplier who has just bought a spanking new SUV from a ford dealership. The sales man makes a nice commission and pays his mortgage.

Police attend, CID attend as do the forensic guys. A fingerprint his is sent to BCAFIS where a tech searches it against data bases using a sophisticated computer system developed for this purpose. A hit is recorded and a suspect identified.

Police attend and locate the suspect and arrest him. He is driven to the police station where a member from CID interviews him after he has spoken with duty counsel. He is then turned over to the duty sergeant who processes him and places him in cells. In the morning he is transported to court, meet with his brief. He then appears before the judge and a court date is set. Bail is denied and he is lodged in pre-trial to await trial. A crown prosecutor receives the file from police and prepares for trial. Meanwhile legal aid assigns a lawyer for the suspect. Disclosure is requested but police are short manned so a police officer does disclosure on double time over the weekend, submitting a claim of 15 hours at double time or about 80 dollars an hour.

Meanwhile the owner/victim files an insurance claim (his rates will now go up) a repair man fixes the door, and the owner goes to future shop and gets a new tv. The sales man is happy, this is the second tv he's sold that day due to break and enters and maybe he can afford that weekend in vegas. The homeowner upgrades the alarm system and locks on doors and windows and pays for monthly monitoring of his alarm. His wife is now afraid in her own home and is having trouble sleeping and undergoes counseling.

Trial goes ahead. The accused is accompanied by corrections officers, the judge, defence and the crown, and a court steno are in attendance. Police are called as witnesses as is the tech that recorded the fingerprint hit (both of whom were on days off and get paid 4 hours at double time). The accused is found guilty and goes to prison. He is released to a halfway house after 6 months and must visit with his probation officer every week. He also undergoes drug rehab for his addiction.

Consider all the jobs that are generated out of one low level offence. Can we afford to not have crime? Where the line is crossed is when violence threatens our safety and we are forced into action, otherwise we happily go about our lives, complaining when our cars are broken into, but quietly accepting it's part of living in the modern world, at least in a large urban area.

Londonuck

Exactly. I'd rather wear a suit made of dollar bills and walk down Cordoba than travel on the 12 bus up the Old Kent Rd!

dbd33

I very much doubt that that is the same meth as the people outside this building are on, they wander into traffic not noticing the trucks, they're not about to drive one. In the case of meth, and perhaps crack, it seems to me that there's no case that someone can make a informed consent to consumption, the consequences are so harmful, so inevitable, and come on so quickly that trying meth is not a rational action. Meth needs to be illegal to protect society from the consequences of people consuming it; the inability to work, the consequent need to commit crimes, the casual violence against passers-by and, a curious behaviour I noticed this morning, the biting (perhaps more correctly gumming) of parked cars.

It seems to me that the case for legal meth as presented on this thread is just "if I want it I should have it", a notion that's incompatible with that of civilization. We don't have absolute freedom in any other aspect of our lives so I don't think this is one about which the ACLU need fret. Legalizing weed, ecstacy and cocaine and taxing them at a moderate rate might calm the drug wars while providing a revenue stream but I think it's a fantasy; a double standard of illegality with no prosecutions is as far as any current government will consider going.

ExKiwilass

But you see the meth addicts, not the people who take it and aren't addicted.