Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yes, like a gigantic drug epidemic. I support rounding up all the drug addicts and force them all into rehab. They are not allowed out until they are clean for a certain amount of time and learn a liveable skill.
Oh that's a wonderful idea, let's institutionalize people who have horrible habits or don't have 'liveable' skills...and when we get the addicts and alcoholics all tucked away in their rehab beds, then we can start committing the morbidly obese, the diabetics who don't take their drugs and watch their diet, and heck..anyone else who does something we find offensive. And what about when these people are discharged and relapse, are they arrested and forced back into treatment? How long will we monitor them to make sure they don't fall back into their 'old ways'? Oh yes and by all means sterilize them all against their will, that's worked out so well in the past when it was utilized in Germany as a means of 'cleansing the gene pool'. What do you suggest we do with drug addicts or alcoholics who are not on public assistance? They are still a scourge on society, right? So do they get sent away against their will too, or do we reserve the special treatment for the poor?
decriminalizing drugs would be solve a lot of problems. Allow addicts to receive regular doses of drugs at a clinic where they self administer them under the supervision of a medical professional. When you don't have to be out in the street hooking for drugs, or trading your food stamps for dope a big piece of the problem is solved. We also need better access to mental health systems, if this woman stayed sober for the rest of her life she would still have serious mental health issues.
Portugal decriminalized drugs a decade ago and the number of addicts has been reduced by 50%. In poor communities the drug culture is the only culture around, forcing people into rehab so they can get out and go right back to where they started using is about the stupidest idea ever.
It's nice to talk about how your tax money is being wasted on people like her- and I agree, giving her money isn't helping her or her kids, but what she gets is chump change compared to the 51 Billion dollars that is wasted every single year on the 40 year old 'war on drugs' which has done absolutely nothing to decrease either the supply of, or demand for drugs
decriminalizing drugs would be solve a lot of problems. Allow addicts to receive regular doses of drugs at a clinic where they self administer them under the supervision of a medical professional. When you don't have to be out in the street hooking for drugs, or trading your food stamps for dope a big piece of the problem is solved. We also need better access to mental health systems, if this woman stayed sober for the rest of her life she would still have serious mental health issues.
Portugal decriminalized drugs a decade ago and the number of addicts has been reduced by 50%. In poor communities the drug culture is the only culture around, forcing people into rehab so they can get out and go right back to where they started using is about the stupidest idea ever.
It's nice to talk about how your tax money is being wasted on people like her- and I agree, giving her money isn't helping her or her kids, but what she gets is chump change compared to the 51 Billion dollars that is wasted every single year on the 40 year old 'war on drugs' which has done absolutely nothing to decrease either the supply of, or demand for drugs
1) decriminalize certain use --- if used through government facility/lab; free (or low cost), ultra high quality, etc
2) make it a capital crime to sell off/black market
3) make it a 10+ year to be caught using black market
4) track the people in #1. use advanced medicine/machine learning and try to 'rehab' them as best as possible (like a functioning alcoholic)
5) make it a capital crime (aggravator) for any violent crime committed under the influence of drugs, either purchased legally or illegally
I tried to paste link above, but this sad story is a frank illustration of how welfare benefits are abused. Woman has spent her entire life on benefits. She has never been gainfully employed. Sec 8 pays her rent, even after her kids have been removed. Her alcoholic baby daddy lives with her illegally. She receives cash for her "disability" of addiction, which she of course uses to buy drugs. She converts food stamps into money for drugs. She illegally rents out rooms in her sec 8 apt to dealers, in exchange for drugs. She refuses inpt drug rehab, out of fear of losing her sec 8 voucher. Even though she has lost custody of all her many previous children, she has not gotten sterilized, and dcf lets her keep and neglect yet another two. It took dcf 4 or 5 years to finally remove these last two kids. Can you imagine at what risk of molestation they were put when mother sublet rooms to her dealers? And of course dcf is working on family reunification for this mother and her neglected children.
She is likely on SSI for her bipolar diagnosis. She might be receiving SSI for her alcohol addiction, but it has been years since that qualified.
She likely belongs in a mental health facility, but we have a limited supply of these thanks to deinstitutionalization where people with severe mental health issues are left to fend for themselves in the community..
It is much less expensive to give her the $733 SSI check, food stamps, and a Section 8 housing voucher than to provide the care she and the thousands of others with significant mental health issues need.
Plus, we can also look down on them and accuse "liberals" of wasting money on the mentally ill. A win-win.
1) decriminalize certain use --- if used through government facility/lab; free (or low cost), ultra high quality, etc
2) make it a capital crime to sell off/black market
3) make it a 10+ year to be caught using black market
4) track the people in #1. use advanced medicine/machine learning and try to 'rehab' them as best as possible (like a functioning alcoholic)
5) make it a capital crime (aggravator) for any violent crime committed under the influence of drugs, either purchased legally or illegally
Why would we need to do all of that? We decriminalized alcohol and don't have a black market that we need to worry about, the 'dealers' go away when there is a legal source for the substance. Portugal retained criminal penalties for selling drugs and they made personal possession a 'civil' offense which is a punished by small fine, no jail time- or instead of paying the fine they can go to any one of a number of drug treatment centers both inpatient and outpatient.
We don't have an enhancement for committing a criminal offense under the influence of alcohol even though FAR more violent crimes are committed by people with alcohol in their system than with drugs, we need to punish the criminal act itself, the exception would be driving under the influence of drugs OR alcohol which should always be a criminal offense.
This is why the government shouldn't be running welfare system or really anything else. Stop taking all of our money in taxes and leave these services to churches and private charitable organizations.
Yet this has been tried before, and it was a miserable failure. Relatively few failed drugs tests and the costs and bureaucracy needed to administrate them was gigantic.
Do you know anything about rehab? You can't force a person to get clean. They have to WANT to get clean, and even then it is incredibly hard.
As is, most are manipulated into rehab by family members or courts that tend to expect a rebab to magically snap people out of addiction/ alcoholism. Reality, rehab often creates new contacts for scoring, post release. Best case, a highly motivated addict may learn some skills to cope with life, as is instead of how they want it to be. Using those skills in the real world is another matter.
More people likely get and manage to stay clean in AA and NA rooms and the Salvation Army than anywhere else. Those who walk through the doors on their own do better than those eho attend meetings because of court orders or manipulation.
All recovery systems work when the addict works the program. Heroin rewires the brain to protect and sustain addiction. When you need a fix the same way normies need their next breath, it takes more than grit to beat it.
At one point in time, China was the Opium addiction capital of the world. Recognizing that addiction was detrimental to China, Mao's armies put an end to it and did so by force. They simply murdered those who engaged in trade or use and over time, made it entirely socially unacceptable.
No social workers. No rehabs. No government support. People had a choice, use/ trade and die or live.
( I was a long time volunteer in a hospital detox/ rehab.)
Then it's an endless cycle that throwing money at won't fix.
What can I tell you.
What I DO know is that more money and more spent on welfare programs sure as hell won't help. There will always be loser degenerates in society. It can't be a perfect world. But let's stop spending so much money on people who just wind up like this idiot in the article.
At the end of the day, people make choices. They are responsible for their own lives and decisions. You can tell a heroin addict until you're blue in the face that heroin is bad, they should go to rehab, get a job, hell even move in with you if you love them that much, but that doesn't mean they will listen. I know from personal experience dealing with people like this. They can have the best family, or the worst family, and still come out a total loser who makes awful decisions. Hope or no hope. So whatever.
No one gets into a drug like heroin with the intention of becoming addicted. Most believe they can control it long after the drug controls them. Heroin addiction crosses economic, racial, ethnic and religious lines. Heroin rewires the brain- a brain disease.
The consequences of addiction are prison or death. And it's not enough to dissuade teens and young adults from trying it.
I used to work with a man who told me he tried heroin as a teen. He knew if he used it again he would have become a raging addict. He said he dreamt of the euphorbia , 30 some years later. When something goes wrong in his everyday life, the heroin monkey on his back reminds him how easy it is to make it all better.
One time use and this reasonably successful middle class guy continued to be haunted by the monkey. Blew me away.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
