Commander wrote:luke strawwalker wrote:
This is true... need to fight it on BOTH ends...
Personally I think it should be made standing policy that anybody coming in to an emergency room who are under the influence of illegal drugs should NOT be treated in any way, shape, or form. If they live, they face trial, if they die, tough luck.
That would make a lot of these idiots think TWICE about doing dope...
Later! OL J R
I have to disagree with you Luke. Too often the downward spiral which a drug abuser finds himself in is something they really can't help after a certain point. They will never think twice about the possible consequences, they are just doing what they "have to" to relieve the pain. It is sad that by the time they end up visiting a hospital they are usually beyond understanding what they have done to themselves.
Decriminalizing it won't work either, as some of the states are finding out now. The only thing I can think of to combat it is to educate people. Maybe a "scared straight" program where those who have fallen the deepest are exposed to youths in their mid teens.
IMHO if they're that messed up their Darwin award material and we're better off letting them kick out... just a drain on society anyway.
As for the decriminalizing, you're absolutely correct. When Colorado and Washington are SO full of pot heads that the companies there can't find any decent employees and start abandoning the state at the same time that the health and societal expenses of potheads start hitting the gubmint services, they'll start to figure that out. I've read more than a few companies are already figuring out that hiring potheads is a losing proposition and are moving elsewhere...
As for the "scared straight" BS, well, I guess it's worth an effort, but it'll never be more than a handful of people that it helps, sort of a token response... I sat through so many of those things in high school back in the late 80's it wasn't even funny... they'd trot out one dopehead loser after another that would tell his sad tale, tell how he got AIDS from shooting up or went to prison or killed his mother or girlfriend or sibling in a car wreck drinking and driving or whatever, and for probably 98% of the student body, there were about two evenly-split responses... There was the "smart kids" (of which I was one) for whom this was just a boring waste of time, because we knew better than to get involved in dope and hang around with alcoholics in the first place... just another parade of losers telling sad stories that if they'd have had a brain in their head to start with and weren't idiots, would have never gotten themselves into the predicament they were in. Oh well, at least I can sleep until it's over...
Then there was response number two, from the other half of the kids, who were the "go get blind stinking drunk every weekend, spread "Susie Cheerleader" across the hood of your pickup and gain carnal knowledge of her, spend all Sunday morning puking your guts out hugging the porcelain queen, smoke weed all Sunday afternoon, then brag about it all week at school until next weekend-- wash, rinse, repeat..." Those kids were gonna go get wasted every weekend drunk as skunks, f*** around with anything that would drop their pants, and smoke anything that was put in front of them... They would just laugh and laugh at the "losers" that they trotted in for these "scared straight" seminars because, to them, "they were the losers who were stupid enough to get caught, or to wreck out, or to burn out and kill somebody, or to screw Typhoid Mary and get AIDS, or whatever..." They were "way too smart" to allow something like THAT to happen to THEM... that stuff happened to other LOSERS who didn't know how to handle their beer or pot or whatever... it'd never happen to THEM!
Now, maybe 1-2%, it might have actually made a difference. In a small school like ours, that might have amounted to about 1-2 kids at most. So is it worth it trying to 'educate' the masses with such a low rate of success?? Given the cost and consequences, yeah, probably so. Did it have ANY EFFECT WHATSOEVER on the 49% of dopers/drunks/f***heads in school that REALLY NEEDED IT?? Nope, none that I ever saw...
I had several classmates die while I was in high school, of drunk driving or drug-related stuff... I remember poor ol' Jordy particularly-- he was so drunk when he rolled his car he flipped out and sailed about probably 50 feet through the air and his car ended up sailing over a fence out into some brush-- folks went looking for him and didn't find him, til some duck hunters found him the next day-- face down in the mud and stiff as a board.
Those funerals were always particular head-shakers for me... the drunks and dopers would line up and weep over the casket and huddle and hug in their little groups, put on a good show basically... but did you think they would ever LEARN anything from it?? Nope, next weekend, its back to "get drunk and wasted and have a good time-- let's pop a top and raise a toast to ol' Jordy..."
Some things never change...
Later! OL J R
My MUNIFICENCE is BOUNDLESS, Mr. Bond...