When I was a kid, society taught us that drugs were addictive and deadly. My parents taught me that if you use drugs, you are a scumbag criminal and will end up dead or in jail.
This was not some kind of sheltered hypocrisy. We had drug addicts on both sides of our family. They were criminals.
People rightfully did not have them at family events worrying that they would steal their jewelry. These people took advantage of positions of trust and did just that before it got to that point.
My parents’ hard stance on drugs kept me from ever experimenting with anything until early adulthood. Thankfully, they were never my thing with any regularity. I regret ever experimenting at all as I have come to learn that many of the narcotics on the street are cursed by satanists.
In more recent years, society has come to view drug experimentation as some kind of rite of passage. Now parents are getting high with their kids.
Marijuana is legal in most if not all states (I really don’t care to find out the actual number). It is supposed to be regulated, but people are stoned all day everyday leading to severe incompetence.
You see people using out in the open all the time. People are smoking marijuana in their cars with impunity. You smell it everywhere.
If you attempted to drink in public to the level that public marijuana use is ignored, you would have a handful of citations. Even tobacco (nicotine itself is a performance enhancer) is less accepted.
Remember when Joe Camel adds just had to go because they targeted children to smoke? Now you have edible TCH packaged like Twinkies.
I know teachers who say the kids are constantly high at school in large numbers now. This all started with the addiction is a disease nonsense.
Is addiction tough to deal with? Yes, but if it is a disease, it is self-inflicted. You don’t catch heroin addiction on the subway. At some point, you make a choice to use it. Same goes for alcohol, BTW.
Then came the idea that too many people are in prison for drugs. My sources in the criminal justice system tell me that people have not been getting locked up for personal use-level drug possession for quite some time if ever.
I’m told it is dealers who get locked up and criminal justice reform along with other Democrat agendas have all but eliminated that too.
It used to be that if you stayed away from heroin, meth and crack, you could dabble in things here and there on occasion without any major issues. Those days are over with fentanyl pouring across our southern border.
Just about everyone now has a story of a death resulting from it and not all regular users. There are people dropping dead because they and some friends decide to turn the party up a notch for the night and get coke or pills laced with this poison.
It was reported that legitimate President Donald J. Trump wanted to bomb cartels in Mexico. Of course, the tone of the linked article is that Trump was some kind of maniac for inquiring about such a feat.
Sure, starting a war in Syria or Ukraine which serves not one American other than those in the pockets of military contractors is a far more stable idea than taking out the chemicals poisoning our society. And there lies the issue.
How many government jobs would be eliminated if drugs were eliminated? How many less cops, lawyers, judges, jails, rehabs, parole officers, probation officers, drug counselors, halfway houses etc. would we need?
There would be far less homeless bums on the street. Today’s bum is not the down and out under-nourished wino of yesteryear. He is a well-fed, young man with a free cell phone and a bike or scooter who enjoys being on the streets using drugs.
He is spoiled, aggressive and dangerous when he doesn’t get his way. He is Jordan Neeley. He is George Floyd.
So, what do we do? It starts at home. Like I said earlier, I was taught that scumbag criminals use drugs.
I was always afraid of the idea of facing my parents’ shame if caught with drugs. Even in my young adult years, I never really had my own supply of anything; it was always offered by friends and I never wanted my elders to know.
I was talking to a parent not too long ago who was saying they were afraid of their children getting hurt by fentanyl. They said that they told their children never to take anything from the streets, only dispensaries.
I understood the logic. They were being realistic about teenage rites of passage. However, the more I thought about it, the more I thought of the fear deterrent.
I did not want to embarrass my parents by being a criminal. With alcohol on the other hand, my parents took the approach of if you are drunk, don’t drive. I will come get you. You will not be in trouble.
I basically took that as a green light to drink so long as I didn’t drive or get into a drunk person’s car and I got drunk for the first time at 13.
So, from my point-of-view, re-criminalization is the better way. Talk soon.
-Marksman