Wander over to the Virtual Mirage and read LL's summary. He would know.
This isn't in any way practical with our current culture here north of the border, but really, the best way to kill off the drug trade is to convince people not to take street drugs in the first place, and if they insist, perhaps to provide them in some legal but controlled fashion. Kill the market for illegal drugs.
After long observation, I've come to the conclusion that people make their own problems. An easy and quick way to do that is to pop some street drug into your body. Problems magnified.
provide them in some legal but controlled fashion. Kill the market for illegal drugs.
ReplyDeleteExcuse my exasperation, but look how well that's worked out with legalizing marijuana. Not only adolescent usage but attendant crimes have been skyrocketing in Colorado since legalization, and I promise you that California is not far behind.
Oh hell yes - legalize crank and fentanyl. Great idea.
Your suggestions to solve the problem?
DeleteI've been saying - and writing - for years that I have no solution. But neither does anybody else. One thing for sure is that legalization has proven to be a demonstrably bad idea. Since the glorification of the drug culture to teenagers in the '60s, there is simply no solution. Millions upon millions of middle-aged Americans believe to their soul that it's harmless, even most especially including those with no experience of it.
ReplyDeleteI smoked weed for 40 years, as self-medication, I have no doubt. Twelve years ago I stopped cold. Let no one tell you there isn't withdrawal involved, either. When it became legal in California I couldn't resist trying it out, the experience of walking into a store and buying dope. What I found convinced me all over again of the internal inconsistency of the idiotic "Libertarian" stance on weed, which boils down to "Government stay out of my life and let me ingest what I want," and also "Let Government regulate the marijuana industry." The situation now is that "legal" weed smokers will all be registered with the federal Government as drug users. Besides that, the stuff they buy in the dispensaries is notably inferior to what they bought and grew themselves in the past. And by the way, legally acquired marijuana becomes a street drug the minute it's carried out the door.
There are still profits to be made. The idea of legalization stopping crime is naive in the extreme. The repeal of the Volstead Act didn't slow down the Mafia, did it?
Do what Mao did he excited all the drug dealers and sent all users to work in the mines for life. No trail no appeals.
ReplyDeleteTake the obscene profits out of the recreational drug trade. Buying rec drugs should be like buying booze, beer & wine.
ReplyDeleteLegal pot causing problems? So what's new? The problems will settle themselves out in time just like they did when we got rid of the failed experiment of banning alcohol.
And the Mob just evaporated, didn't it?
DeleteThe belief that "The problems will settle themselves out in time just like they did when we got rid of the failed experiment of banning alcohol" is just dangerously naive. The decade-plus "failed experiment of banning alcohol" invited and encouraged a criminal class of a robustness that no legal mechanism has yet existed to control it even a hundred years later. Now they're building casinos all over the country on the backs of phony Indian tribes. The prostitution and other crime which inevitably follows will continue to plague communities throughout the country as those establishments attract more and more of that element.
The marijuana prohibition era did the same thing with Mexican and South American criminal organizations, and now, legalize it or not, that corruption is here to stay. Do you really believe that the horrifying gang violence that's taken over Mexico in the last 20 years won't become a part of your nightly news in America? Too late - it's here.
I dated a girl who took an Economics class in college.
ReplyDeleteChapter 19 was: The Heroin Trade.
send the Marines into South America. stop guarding the poppy fields in Afghanistan. no easy answers.
Drug addiction is a tough one, so is alcoholism; AA helps alcoholics but the person has to want to get sober. Narcotics Anonymous has the same type of 12 step program, but I'm not as familiar with it.
ReplyDeleteNeither program is a cure-all, or even a cure-most. Courts sometimes sentence alkies/addicts to attend meetings, which is almost always a waste of time for all concerned; the only time that works is if the person attending actually wants to change his life, and wants to stop drinking/drugging. Most don't, they just want to stay out of jail.
Unfortunately drunks/addicts need "tough love" to encourage them to stop doing what they do; but families & welfare offices keep trying to help them out, acting as codependants, so they don't ever reach the rock bottom they need to change their ways. I wish I had an answer to this huge problem, but I don't.