Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Jimmy]

I think it can be applied to prisons.  Create a society where people don't fall into patterns of poverty where their only perceived out is crime.  The people who aren't pushed into crime DO suffer in prison, because they already have 3 squares a day and a roof over their head.

Government handouts aren't the answer. Welfare should always be supported with a legitimate need. From my personal perspective, one of the biggest rorts of welfare is disability benefits. Every day I see the unwashed, unemployable underbelly of society living on the dime of taxpayers and adding to this meager income through the sale of illegal or controlled drugs. I'm personally in favor of creating jobs for welfare, a task within the capabilities of the person including their health issues that requires them to show up to a location in uniform 38 hours a week. Reduce their spare time and they'll have less to spend grooming their latest crop of cannabis. If we're going to legalize it, why not kill two birds with one stone and start the legal industry off with the people who have the most experience in the field?

Sarcasm aside, government bailouts should encourage people to strive for more. They should enable you to survive but deny you luxuries. Food, clothing and shelter are all they should allow you to enjoy, not cars, phones and internet, restaurant meals and cable TV. The modern comforts and luxury items are what you earn with a job.

[DJ]

With the state of public transport in USA, I'd say that a car is a necessity rather than a luxury. You can't hold a job if you can't get to it.

[GlyphGryph]

Unless you live in one of several places where public transport isn't actually bad. (Within a half dozen miles of a city, on the west coast, or in New England).

Of course, those places also tend to have higher base costs of living, so the benefit of "not needing a car" could well be a wash financially. Of course, under certain circumstances, cars would be a better baseline than a fixed shelter, hands down.

I'd argue phone and internet access are at least as much a necessity for a great many jobs, though mostly for acquiring them and you mostly just need access rather than ownership.

And woops, I think I've gotten off topic.

So, uh... yeah... a better sort of welfare system might help with drugs? I don't know. It's generally not the physical/monetary poverty that lead people to spend their time getting wasted, to abuse drugs instead of just occasionally using them, in my experience, (although it often leads to that) - it's the social poverty and the poverty of opportunity. The community, in large part. It's the lack of any realistic alternatives in the pursuit of happiness.

Providing the base necessities won't do much about this, and certainly won't encourage people to try for more - for that, you need to give them a reasonable belief that "more" is actually obtainable. After all, it's a hell of a lot easier to settle for less than do what you believe to be impossible, especially when the cost of striving is high.

[Neonivek]

With the state of public transport in USA, I'd say that a car is a necessity rather than a luxury. You can't hold a job if you can't get to it.

It is what I call a "Semi-luxury"

Yes you CAN get on with your life without it. It is just that the sheer loops you have to go through to not use one is rather sizable.

A 30 minute car trip can take over 2 hours by public transit and 1 hour in ideal conditions.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You can live without a car in the US in some circumstances. I do, though that will have to change once I'm out of college. Generally, you can survive in college towns without a car if you have to.

[lordcooper]

I think it can be applied to prisons.  Create a society where people don't fall into patterns of poverty where their only perceived out is crime.  The people who aren't pushed into crime DO suffer in prison, because they already have 3 squares a day and a roof over their head.

Government handouts aren't the answer. Welfare should always be supported with a legitimate need. From my personal perspective, one of the biggest rorts of welfare is disability benefits. Every day I see the unwashed, unemployable underbelly of society living on the dime of taxpayers and adding to this meager income through the sale of illegal or controlled drugs. I'm personally in favor of creating jobs for welfare, a task within the capabilities of the person including their health issues that requires them to show up to a location in uniform 38 hours a week. Reduce their spare time and they'll have less to spend grooming their latest crop of cannabis. If we're going to legalize it, why not kill two birds with one stone and start the legal industry off with the people who have the most experience in the field?

Sarcasm aside, government bailouts should encourage people to strive for more. They should enable you to survive but deny you luxuries. Food, clothing and shelter are all they should allow you to enjoy, not cars, phones and internet, restaurant meals and cable TV. The modern comforts and luxury items are what you earn with a job.

My mother suffers from severe brain damage, is unable to walk at more than a shuffle, struggles to read and occasionally fails to recognise family members and close friends.  Precisely what job do you think she should be forced into?

By the way, you should really take the time to look into how many unemployed people there are vs how many job vacancies exist.  There's quite a massive gap between the two.

[Jimmy]

Then compare your mother to the delightful regular customer at my pharmacy who has to come in each week to pick up another seven days worth of his medications for his "anxiety" and "back pain" because if he gets the full amount as a single go they're gone in a few days. Obviously he can't work with such debilitating conditions, though that doesn't seem to hold him back much from enjoying a life that would rival any Hollywood action thriller, complete with a mysterious underground criminal organization that seems to have him targeted with the sole purpose of stealing his tablets.

While you say there aren't enough jobs to go around, you're assuming I am talking about profitable, productive jobs. I'm actually talking about government positions created specifically to employ time. Shredding paperwork, sorting mail, any activity within the means of the persons abilities. There's a wonderful organization I've had contact with in our area that cares for the disabled, in specific people with Downs Syndrome. They run a workshop that does document destruction which employs the people they care for, and it actually creates revenue to offset the cost of the charity they provide. They also try to outsource job positions for the more abled, one of whom works at a cafe near our store busing tables. Just because you're disabled doesn't mean you can't work, it means you need opportunities to find work within your abilities.

Anyway, enough derail. A topic for another thread. Mother Teresa vs. Ayn Rand doesn't have anything to do with legalizing drugs.

[PTTG??]

Drug use is a disease, not a moral failing. It's bad for you, yes. Is the cure for the common cold to throw sick people in jail? Does a good solid beating with a nightstick solve a broken bone?

Perhaps I was too confining when I describe drug use as a disease in itself- because in fact, it might be truer to describe it as a self-medication, a treatment for depression when you don't have other options.

Our current drug policies are, from a psychological, medical perspective, like imprisoning people with cancer (and people who might have cancer, or who know people who have been near people who might have cancer) inside reused nuclear waste containers.

[lordcooper]

It's not a bloody disease.  Some people use them for medicinal reasons, some for fun, some for spiritual purposes.  It's a choice.

[PTTG??]

It's not a bloody disease.  Some people use them for medicinal reasons, some for fun, some for spiritual purposes.  It's a choice.

The vast majority of people I know who use illegal drugs are using it as self-medication for depression. This is the reason drugs hurt people- they aren't being used properly. Besides maybe aspirin, I can't think of a helpful, perfectly legitimate chemical that can't hurt someone who doesn't use it safely.

You won't prevent people from, I don't know, overdosing on plaster casts by outlawing plaster casts, or broken bones. Nor am I calling for everyone who so much drinks a glass of champagne on new years to go to AA. But actual alcoholics aren't just having fun. They have a medical issue, as serious as any other mental disease. People who can't put down a roach long enough to go to a job interview (even though there's nearly no physical addiction) also have a medical problem, as do more traditional drug abusers like your classical Russian crocodiles.

Any sane drug policy should have room for safe and dangerous levels of use- and I think that the people who should be responsible for this are not law enforcement, not politicians, but medical doctors, psychologists, and scientists.

[lordcooper]

I agree with almost everything that you're saying, but addiction is simply the result of continued poor decisions (except for very rare exceptions where it was forced upon someone).  I'm not gonna demonize someone for that, and I agree that society should be making more of an effort to help people get back on their feet, but it's simply not a disease.  Apparently people get hooked on WoW and stuff.  Mental illness/self esteem problems etc aren't really the same as an actual physical disease.  Just one of my pet peeves really.

[PTTG??]

I'm far from a true professional in the field, but it is my amateur understanding that the line between mental disorders and physical illness is very thin- as narrow as the blood-brain barrier, in fact. Depression can be caused by lingering disease, as much by being trapped in a hospital as by hormonal changes. Schizophrenia is by nature a genetic disorder brought to light by mental trauma. People gain weight from stress, and stress from unwanted weight... and more positively, report emotional wellness improving with physical exercise quite conclusively.

You may have differing experience, but my understanding is that a mental disorder revolving around the nerochemical response to a drug is very strongly a physical and mental problem.

[GlyphGryph]

Aspirin is actually a fairly dangerous drug if used improperly, and this is a pretty important and common misconception. It has a lot of nasty side effects when combined unknowingly with other drugs (such as alcohol), there are plenty of people with deadly aspirin allergies, and overdosing on it basically destroys your stomache lining and can eventually lead to fatal internal bleeding.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of people I know who use illegal drugs DON'T use them to self-medicate, but rather occassionally and recreationally.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You don't have to overdose on aspirin to ruin your stomach lining, just using it consistently for a long time will do.

[Jimmy]

Heh, interesting little footnote about aspirin from my Uni days. Did you know that, given the list of adverse reactions and risk of side effects of the drug, it would probably fail any modern application for listing a new substance? If you rate it according to the FDA guidelines, for instance, it would be rejected as too toxic.