poison the drugs - viola! no more drug problem

Great Debates
41

Pennylane,
You know the funny thing is that I dont fear tobacco or alcohol. But I do fear drugs for my children. I know that even if I did keep them from everything, the chances are greater that they will run over by a drunken friend than OD. Just because alcohol and tobacco are bad then we shouldn’t fight cocaine? We should fight each on its own terms.

You do actually have to poison some fields or some of the product somehow. even if the tainted stuff is destroyed. Just to make the threat real. I don’t agree that the current ODs are publicized enough. Its like nobody wants to see it. ignore it and it didnt happen.

there was a threat earlier this year with some designer drug killing people cause it was made incorrectly. If that kind of story got more play then maybe kids would think twice. I bet if you ask 100 high school students if they knew how many kids died last summer with that bad batch, about 5 would know anything about it at all.

Like I said before, you dont have to actually kill anyone. You just add the threat of poison to the threat of being caught and for the least part, ODing.

what we got here is a desperate parent with no plan in sight except to tell the kids to DARE.

42

This should just about finish off this idea.

  1. If the govt announced on the news that it was gonna actually poison drug fields, the govt would immediately be under attack for doing it. So, this would not happen.
  2. If the govt was gonna do this, the ONLY way it could hope to get ANY benefit would be by doing it secretly and NEVER take any responsibility for it. So, there goes your feeling of fair warning for the users to quit.
  3. Contrary to what most people think who have never purchased anything like this, the VAST majority of drug deals are not street deals between two people who don’t know each other. Most of the time, people buy from the same people over and over and know each other at least fairly well. This gives the dealer a TREMENDOUS incentive to sell quality stuff only. He is involved in an illegal enterprise. The LAST thing he wants to do is piss off his customers. The risk of being turned in or even worse is obvious.
43

There are bad ideas, say about 2.4 on the Elucidator scale. Really bad ideas, run about 4.0 to 6.0. This one goes to 11.

But soft! Justinh has “clarified” his position. Not gonna poison all the fields, just enough so that propaganda can emphasize and exaggerate.

Oh. Well, then. Seems I “got my panties in a wad” over nothing, really. Not a whole bunch of dead kids, just a few. Nothing really, couple of dozen, maybe. And then we could finally eradicate the terrible scourge of pot smoking from our nation! Oh, happy day! Why, after the initial round of unpleasentness fades, emergency room admissions for marijuana overdose might very well drop to near zero.

No, once again sarcasm fails me, this idea is too stupid, too vicious, to make fun of. An idea like this to solve the drug problem is like leprosy to cure acne.

44

OH, here is an obvious solution to your problem justin.

Be a man! Get the real information about drugs. (definitely clear up that cocaine coming from poppy fields bit) Tell your kids the TRUTH, not propaganda. That is what a parent is for.

You might be able to scare them off with propaganda, but… if one of the kids then does try something someday, he/she will immediately see through the propaganda and then not believe ANYTHING that you told him/her on the subject… even if it was good advice. The key is to keep your credibility high.

The true danger, in my opinion, of most intoxicants is not the intoxicant itself. It stems from doing it someplace not safe, and trying to get away with it in secret. An example:

Kid decides he is gonna drink at a party, doesn’t want parents to find out, and has to be home at 12:30. Kid gets shitty drunk, its now 12:30, begins to panic. Can’t call dad… hmmm… guess I’ll just have to get myself home and go straight to bed. Crash.

On the other hand, in most states it is quite legal for kids to drink under the supervision of their parents (did ya know that?). If you say, “hey, if wanna drink… just do it here…” Many things change from this approach. The kid figures out what drinking is like and what is a reasonable amount to drink, at home, where it is safe. If the kid later on does over do it sometime, he/she is MUCH more likely to call home and say what really happened and ask for a ride home.

Also, countless alchoholics have gotten started by sneaking drinks all the time just to rebel. If they can’t drink at home in the open if they want to, it just takes all the fun out of that.

Is this fool proof, perfect? NO, but it is an improvement over they it is often handled.

45

You’re right, Justin, deaths from tainted drugs aren’t publicised very much. So why don’t we just give them more publicity, rather than poison the drugs? We could launch a television campaign showing shocking footage of drug-related deaths such as the one in England which warns of the need for rear seat-belts in cars. Grisly scenes of dead passengers affected the audience to the extent that complaints forced the message to a later time slot. This kind of approach doesn’t involve killing anyone but can still be effective.

46

should be:
“If they can drink at home, in the open, if they want to, it just takes all the fun out of that.”

and:
“Is this fool proof, perfect? NO, but it is an improvement over how it is often handled.”

47

Pennylane,
well thats the beauty of this. You dont have to kill anybody with poison. You just give the rumor some credence by reports of foreign govt actually spraying fields. and you publicize any drug related death with the possibility of it being from “poison” drugs. it just might scare some from trying it or using it for recreation or rebellion. I know it would have worked on me. Am I still a lunatic? you cut me to the quick.

Scotth,
I am doing all I can to keep them away but there is more to the equation than just parents. peer is a big factor. mainstream intertainment is another. I am just looking for a little help. and you are right in that propaganda is useless if they see thru it. thats why you need some proof. ie CNN showing fields being sprayed. and young people dying (if it was just from normal OD , then noone would have to know that, just give the hint that it could be from the poison drugs)

the drinking at home thing is an interesting issue. suitable for another thread. I only know 1 alcoholic and his dad believed in that. I dont know how much that played into his condition.

Trisk,
If you noticed the details of my plan. nobody would die from poison drugs. but the fear of dying from poison drugs would save lives. but a second thought ‘if you display a poison and tell everyone “if you drink this you will/might die:” then is it mass murder if some poor boob drinks it?’. you have to assume that he heard it and understood and blah,blah, . but this is not mass murder. thats just stupidity.

48

Point No. 1, Justinh: The government has already tried this. During the Carter administration, the feds sprayed paraquat on dope fields. I was one of thousands who marched on the White House on July 4, 1978, to protest this cruel policy.

Point No. 2: Even if Uncle Sugar did spray, the government is not going to find all the patches. The police did not find my crop this summer even though helicopters went over the woods and fields several times. Due to poverty, my own stuff is the only weed I’ve been able to smoke the past six months.

49

It’s a war on DRUGS, not a war on DRUGGIES.

50

Well, this is a substantially different position than your OP. But, still, you are suggesting a giant conspiracy of lying. COUNT on it being revealed as such, and then being in a worse position than where you started. Anyone that wants to sway long term opinion and more importantly behaviour MUST maintain credibility.

YOU have direct control over parental influence, and there you must make your stand. You have no control over what peers do/say. Suggesting a public policy of misinformation is GOING to backfire in the biggest possible way.

If you are going to get other govts involved in spraying, it would be MUCH easier to get them to just destroy the crops and arrest the growers than to get deliberately poison users. Even this hasn’t worked well at all.

51

Fat chance, given the nature of those of us who post in Great Debates.

The only bone you can expect to see is your own, with all flesh removed! :frowning:

52

You admit that your view is basically irrational. Hey, it’s a free country–if you want to spend all your money designing an alligator-proof toilet, because you fear that alligators live in the sewers and will come up and bite you on the butt some day, well, it’s your life. But I don’t think we should be making public policy decisions based on irrational phobias.

If we were fighting each of them “on its own terms”, based purely on the level of public health problems they cause, we’d be doing serious battle on alcohol consumption (hmmmm…didn’t we try that once?) and waging an all out war on tobacco. The way things stand now, all other recreational drugs would be battling it out for third place in our attention, and a rather distant third place at that. If we included social problems broader than just people getting sick or dying–unwanted pregnancies, date rape, domestic violence, various other assaults, innocent people being killed on public roadways, and people being unable to hold down jobs and going on the dole or winding up homeless–we might push alcohol up to first place over tobacco.

53

Ok, Ive got a better idea then this whole nonsense. Why dont we just end the damn “war” on drugs? We all know its complete BS.

54

Thank you for the great idea justin. I now know what my next attack on the American devils will be.

O.B.Ledan

I knew someone who died fron a heroin od. This was about ten yrs ago. There was a bad batch of the stuff going around and he knew personaly others who had died but this did not stop him.

d

55

IMO the best defence you can give to protect your children from drugs is to educate them. Explain WHY people take them and what the consequences are both negative and positive.

This will be a learning process for both of you. It is so easy to explain away all these social problems (homelessness, poverty, family breakdown) by pointing at an all encompassing sign that says DRUGS. If we get rid of the drugs, everything will be fine. This is simply not true. Drug taking has many causes, wanting to have fun, wanting to escape, wanting to fit in and just plain boredom. We have to accept that current illicit drugs (dope/opiates/amphetamines) will ALWAYS be in our society and if anything they will grow in variety. History tells us this.

The truth is that no matter what you do your children will at some stage try out certain drugs. Poison the heroin and wait a month for the alternative to be invented. But if your kids have a sensible head on their shoulders (that’s your part) they will be just fine.

To get back to the point, there is absolutely no point in tackling the problem in your naive way. Saying that we don’t actually have to poison the drugs (just tell people we did) just adds to the monumental amount of bullshit surrounding drugs. Why don’t people take heed of the numerous and varied drug warnings? Partly because they don’t want to and partly because they suspect most of it is bullshit. Lets cut away the bull and let people decide for themselves whether they will use.

Lets face it, at the end of the day the only sure way to keep your kids of drugs is to blow their heads off.

56

When did I call you a lunatic, Justin? Anyway, if you don’t intend to actually poison any drugs (or you intend to destroy the ones that are poisoned), then I suppose your idea isn’t as horrific as it seemed at first. You still didn’t comment on my alternative idea - which would be to publicise current deaths from tainted or impure drugs. That wouldn’t involve a giant government conspiracy which could later be uncovered and shatter any credibility you can expect drug-related warnings to have in the future.

57

Pennylane,
well its not actually a conspiracy. its just an exaggeration of the facts.

Here is the plan again:
newflash: The US govt in its war on drugs has brokered a deal with the foreign countries which produce cocaine. For our continued aid they will eradicate the production fields.
This should reduce the amount of cocaine in the US.

Newflash update: several reports of OD from cocaine have been linked to the bad cocaine. It is reported that some producers have imported the tainted cocaine. this makes it potentially lethal when processed into cocaine.

Newflash update: due the unexplained number of deaths from cocaine, a govt agency has begun to story these tragic deaths might be related to the tainted cocaine.
lots of updates and pictures. the result is not a coverup or a conspiracy just an exaggeration of the facts. Maybe enough to scare some young people into adding a new fear into the cocaine use. And there is nothing to uncover except for the “possible exaggeration of the threat”.

No its not going to stop hard core users with “trusted sources”. The aim would be to reduce the number of new experimental users.

Solomon7T,
No we dont end the war just because its difficult. we have too much to lose.

Dmaan,
would your friend an idiot or what? If he knew the chances and took them then what can you do about it? Or was he an addict that didnt have a choice? then we have to get back to interdiction to keep him from ever getting hooked.

58

Let’s have the government try to scare those kiddies off cocaine… If you were one of the hippies, justinh, you probably shouldn’t go to any reunions anytime soon. Er, do hippies have reunions? Probably not…it would depress them too much to see how much of their bright-eyed ranks have become paranoid Republican suburbanites. Hey, maybe it was all the pot they smoked that has caused the paranoia–maybe justin was on to something here…

I have a better idea: have the local government wherever justinh lives spend a few hundred dollars scaring his kids away from all the potential pitfalls before them (any effective method will do, right dad?), and leave everyone else to make it through the minefield that is life on their own.

59

Several things I’ve notice about this “War on Drugs”

  1. Look at the commercials on TV and the Radio and what celebrities say for spots on TV and tell me there laking to the parents of todays children. Granted I’ve seen a few but not much.

  2. Tell me these commercials are condemning the use of cocaine, heroine, opiates, barbituates, LSD, acid, shrooms, extacy, MDMA, and all the others. So far I’ve only seen it about cigarettes and Marijuana.

  3. Why is this focus controlled so well?

The war on drugs pretty much started or excalated at the time of the panamanian invasion. Then the panama front was then just pulled. Why? I think (dispite the haggling I’ll probably get) that there is an allowance that the U.S. Gov. considers to be ok to let in. Gov. makes some kickback money on the side, they bust a few people at the borders and sea to make themselves look good. and all the while the Drug kings down south make some cash. The commercial thing is just to make you think the war is still going and it diverts your childrens mind and yours to the harder drugs. Therefor “they” make more money because the harder drugs is where the cash is. The commercials pretty much are just a distraction and diversion.

Now what I’m saying the only way to actually get rid of the drug problem is to make drugs legal and free. Wait a sec, I’m going somewhere with this. If you can teach your children yourself about drugs and they see that they are free, maybe he’ll see a worthless thing. If something costs money it should be worth it, right?

60

Sheesh!

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics. Plus dated statistics (only 11 yeas old), yet!

What is a Smoking Attributable Death, anyway?