I dont think anybody with an opinion or experience with drugs (of any kind) is going to have a light bulb go off in his head and say Voila!!! I now understand!. I am not trying to convince Scotth to push for poisoning the drug supply. What I am attempting is to offer a counter proposal to the popular “well we have alcohol and tobacco so whats a little cocaine. cocaine isnt as bad as…anyway”.
I am trying 1. to voice “drugs are bad”
2. to offer another weapon in the war
against drugs
I think there is a value of voicing different viewpoints. If a teenager sees these post and sees that everyone says drugs as ok then why are my parents ranting against them.
Restated slightly, I would completely agree with you. But, we’ll get to back to that in a bit.
But, there is a huge problem with the way we are doing things today. It has about 1/4 to 1/2 truth in it. That is what is getting fed to the kids. And typically where kids get started is where the lies are the heaviest. The kids then see through the lies here, and deduce that the package is completely lies. You wind up worse than before. Even the stuff that is completely true in the message is discarded.
I believe there is a really effective drug policy out there. I plan to lay it out completely if we keep this going. However, the fundemental ground conditions (facts) must be laid out. We are working on that now.
But, step one.
Drugs, are not apriori “bad”. They do have inherent dangers. Each drug has its own set of inherent dangers. This is true be it alcohol, pcp, lsd, cocaine, or heroin.
I happen to believe that pcp, cocaine, and heroin have some particularly high inherent dangers.
And besides those, the way were are doing things today, adds even more problems. So much of the social destruction we see today is a direct result of our treatment of this problem.
There are several things that need a huge amount of improvement.
Incarceration rates are way too high.
Chemical dependence is way too high.
Crime is way to high.
The availability of substances to minors is way too high.
Do we agree on these? I think we do. I think there is a way to much hugh strides on all these.
Aw shucks. You give me too much credit, sir. Your own attempts to dispel the unfounded preconceptions of certain posters far outstrip my own meager efforts.
[/courtly southern gentleman]
(Plus, you’re a couple time zones ahead of me, so you can get an earlier start. )
I am in complete agreement with you that children should not do drugs.
I think we are in agreement that our current drug policy is a dismal failure. Where we disagree is that you are advocating that we escalate the War on Drugs, make it even more vicous and draconian than it is now. I am saying that we need to fundamentally re-examine the way we are dealing with the obvious problem of drugs in our society. Prohibition does not work. Propaganda, lies and distortion do not work. Poisoning drugs and beheading drug dealers ( :rolleyes: ) would not work.
)