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Hi Mark,
I think there is a world of difference between what people choose to do to themselves and comparing it to what they might do to others. Everybody has a knife in their home. Not everyone chooses to use it as a weapon. I've known people with gun licenses, who owned shotguns and rifles. They've never harmed anyone. It all stems from education and morals. Two things this country is sorely lacking in.
We've always had a problem with alcohol in this country, which was only exacerbated by the advent of the extended drinking laws. It comes back to education of the young. In France children are brought up with alcohol at the dinner table. To them, its no big whoop. Its just something they drink with the family at meal time. I remember an exchange student coming over and when he told us he drank beer and wine we were surprised by it.
Here children are not introduced to alcohol in a responsible manner. Its something that adults do and children become aware of. Like the proverbial apple in the Garden of Eden, the more you restrict them from it, the more they want to experiment with it, ususally away from the safety of the home, where they are a danger to themselves and others. When they hit 18, they are free to drink legally, so they just go hell for leather at it because its now allowed and cool in their and their peers eyes.
The media is largely to blame as it glamourizes alcohol. If girls want to be sexy, drink it. If you wanna be a man, drink it when you watch football. If alcohol was introduced to the young in a sensible, controlled and balanced manner, we wouldn't have the extent of problems with it that we do today.
I agree that the penal system in this country is a complete and utter joke. You have career criminals with a rap sheet longer than your arm. They know they can rob peoples homes and just get a suspended sentence or community service. There is no real deterent. In my local paper I read of some thug who viciously assaulted some poor guy, breaking his jaw and cheek bones if I remember rightly. He got a suspended sentence. How many cases do we hear of in the news of people murdered as the person who assaulted them the first time, came back to finish the job.
We need more prisons. We also need to make prisons, prisons again - not damn holiday camps, with TV's, pool tables and games consoles and the like. Make them repay their debt to society. Get them tidying up litter from fly tippers or clearing canals. Make their experience so damn miserable that it actually serves as a deterent.
I agree with you too about the general apathy of the population and the enjoyment derived from seeing other people hurt. Again, the media is to blame for this. It glamorises gangsters and thuggery on tv and in movies. Being promiscuous with complete strangers, once taboo, now the norm. Recording yourself on a mobile phone as you slap some passerby in the face is "funny". Young girls want to grow up and be "glamour" models just like Jordan, although I can't see what's so glamourous about getting your knockers out for the world to see. Boys want to be rap stars or footballers. Virtually all kids today want everything but aren't prepared to work for it.
If we could round up all the drug users who mug and rob to feed their habit and plonk them on an island allowing them to consume to their hearts content, yeah society might be a better place but, its not a practical solution and the one offered to us since the introduction of Dangerous Drugs Act 1925 has been totally ineffective. Drugs have been here before and after the introduction of the law and no matter how hard government strive, they will never prevent it. They haven't for 85 years and it has only gotten progressively worse.
The system doesn't work. That's abundantly clear. New approaches need to be made to tackle the problem. If drugs were legal or made available it doesn't mean people will take them. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do drugs. No one in my family does. Its all about free will and freedom of choice. You can choose to drink, or smoke or do drugs. Governments dictating what people can and can't do, doesn't work. History repeatedly tells us that.
The consequence of drug prohibition is that it has allowed thousands of Al Capones to crop up all over this nation and others, which spread nothing but misery, violence and social decay. If you take the money out of drugs, you kill the economy for it. Why would I go to a dealer for my £15 bag of weed if I can grow it for free in my back yard? Why would I buy cocaine that is potentially cut with something lethal, when I could get it pure over the counter. The same with heroin. You aren't ever going to stop people from smuggling in or creating and taking the drugs. What you can do is take the money and the associated glamour surrounding it out of the equation, which would be the biggest benefit to society we could possibly achieve.
I can totally appreciate your views though Mark, as it would be a big step into unfamiliar territory and contary to everything we've ever been told and ever known about narcotics. The thought of soft and hard drugs being readily available is so alien to us that it is quite scarey. What we have to remember though is illegal drugs are already widely available, its just that most of us don't frequent the establishments where they are. If we are to cut the crime that surrounds drugs, we need to kill the economy for them and the glamour surrounding them. The only way we can do that is by legalizing them.
Holy poop, that's an essay right there lol.
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