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The problem is that demonization is way easier for people than true compassion in treating people. This stretches further than drugs - online places like Lemmy reinforce this problem even more rather than help eradicate it.
Indoctrination runs deeper than it is thought, and it is for this, that we will still have discrimination and lack of empathy for those who truly need it.
All drugs should be legal and regulated. The War on drugs causes more harm then the drugs they prohibit.
Think of all the cruelty that’s being lost though. In some places, isn’t cruelty the point?
I agree with harm reduction. I think that’s a good thing, but if you’ve ever been to Amsterdam, you’ll know that it’s a death trap.
No one wears a helmet on their bike, and they’re just wildly out of control. It’s pretty easy to roll your car into the canals and drown (no rails). Stairs are steep and treacherous, and every commercial building I went into had the door opening inwards.
It’s one thing in a house, but inward opening doors have killed so many panicked people.
At the same time the Netherlands are the drug trafficking hub of Europe and therefore the drug cartels are pretty powerful there. A couple of years ago an investigative reporter was murdered in broad daylight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Peter_R._de_Vries
(This is a big deal in the Netherlands and Europe)
Yeah, except #2 and a few notes:
Why get it on the street? Because 3 bags a day isn’t enough for a lot of addicts, especially those deeper in. I avoided it but most of my friends got hit, one that’s still alive said he used 3 bags a shot iirc, he bought it in bundles for sure.
And also another reason is because of the “it’s pure” thing. Bro, they don’t want pure, they want the fent. Like actively, they’re seeking it out now, there’s straight up fent dealers that don’t even try to hide it in H or pressies anymore. When a junkie dies and the rest of them hear about it, the dealer’s business is BOOMING because, literally, “well if it killed Jimmy it must be some good shit, and I can handle it unlike Jimmy.” Seriously, that is actually how bad the mind of the true junkie has been twisted by the brown, it gets pretty bad.
So that’s why they’ll often still seek it elsewhere, but the free bags are a nice bonus of course.
But for the most part, yeah it gets them near counseling, clean works, and narcan in the room. That stuff is still good.
If you believe that laws forbidding gambling, sale of liquor, sale of contraceptives, requiring definite closing hours, enforcing the Sabbath, or any such, are necessary to the welfare of your community, that is your right and I do not ask you to surrender your beliefs or give up your efforts to put over such laws. But remember that such laws are, at most, a preliminary step in doing away with the evils they indict. Moral evils can never be solved by anything as easy as passing laws alone. If you aid in passing such laws without bothering to follow through by digging in to the involved questions of sociology, economics, and psychology which underlie the causes of the evils you are gunning for, you will not only fail to correct the evils you sought to prohibit but will create a dozen new evils as well.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government, written in nineteen fucking forty-six!
Sadly, many highly vocal people oversimplify that whole quote to, “Government bad!” Heinlein didn’t mean that, he meant government has to be intelligent and competent, not half-assed.
“But if we treat these people as human beings and not trash who am I supposed to demonise for all of society’s problems?” - My boomer parents
Along with most of lemmy, I agree that drug addiction should be treated as a sickness and not demonized. But I wonder how people who share the same opinion would feel about treating their own rage triggers that way. For example, if somebody said Russell Brand has a psychological problem we should help him with and hope he gets over it, the predictable response would be “Fuck you for defending rape, you piece of shit!” But people face the same challenge when they think of addicts as irredeemably evil.
Drug addiction causes direct physical harm to the user. If you remove the monetary cost, the other social harms are mostly resolved. There is very little danger to anyone other than the user if we treat substance addiction as an illness in the way described in this Tumblr post.
Sexual assault, by definition, harms other people besides the person who has the psychological problem. There is not really a way to treat it as an illness that mostly resolves the social harms.
I think that violent offenders should be kept away from the rest of society to reduce their ability to harm others. I think some of them are truly remorseful and can be rehabilitated, and those people can and should receive treatment and be reintegrated after they are no longer dangerous to others. I think some offenders are psychopaths who cannot be rehabilitated, and the only way we protect our society is to keep those people imprisoned indefinitely.
All of these things can be true at the same time, but internet forums are usually not conducive to nuanced conversations about complex topics.
I haven’t followed Russell Brand’s legal case. Has he expressed remorse and sought help, or has he just denied having committed a crime? I don’t think we can help anyone until they admit that they need help.
Drug abuse and sexual assault aren’t really comparable things, though. Typically drug users aren’t hurting anyone besides themselves.
The difference is that Russell Brand made people into victims. He harmed other people, and it’s an inherent product of rape. Same with murder and assault.
Addicts don’t inherently harm other people. In fact the addicts are the victims. Going after them is more akin to trying to demonize suicide victims.
Well he has psychological issues and should seek help for them…but a lot of people have psychological issues and don’t rape. Yes, even people with sex addictions. So they’re kinda two seperate things
Any rate, part of recovery for addiction includes acknowledging what you did to get your hands on it and how damaging it was, and doing so in a way that gives you ‘useful’ remorse instead of spiraliing out again
The justice system should be about rehabilitation.
Sweden is doing the complete opposite. It’s the one thing all of our political parties agree on; drugs are evil, people who do drugs are evil, and need to be put in jail (except if you work in parliament of course because politicians are good so their drug use is also good).
We also have some of the highest drug related deaths in Europe. That’s to say, currently drugs are winning the war on drugs.
What the fuck is happening in Sweden? You guys used to be cool!
Americans are confused, vulnerable people are for exploitation, not compassion in America.
Well put! Took a few tries to read, perhaps add a
;there next time.So, poorly put. Like good sentiment but they did not ‘put’ it well since it took a couple rereads.
Not polite that way
Lol sorry had a late night last night
angry upvote
I thought this post was about neanderthals
Then you get Sweden where the government will go out of their way to destroy your life for you if you have drugs in your system.
Same with the US. Most countries, I’ll bet.
Well of course, the Dutch are clever.
Handing out Methadone and in the harder cases even Heroin, with clean needles in protected spaces, is what finally properly solved the extensive drug issues in the 90s here in Zürich too. The repression approach they tried first just moved the scene from Platzspitz (known in English as “Needle Park” I believe) to Letten. Harm reduction approaches were the true solution.
Same thing in Portugal since 2001 by the way.
I was just about to mention Portugal. When you give people help and a safe option to quit then many do quit.
The British have had a system of heroin maintenance since the 1920s. For decades it supplied a few hundred addicts nationwide, most of whom were doctors themselves. It was de-emphasized considerably during the 1960s-1980s as a result of the U.S.-led war on drugs.
so confusing. what does this have to do with voting for Democrats
I was informed by a hivemind of ml tankies that “harm reduction” doesn’t work, in any sense.
