Posted on 08/19/2007 7:34:56 PM PDT by ventanax5
Drug-addiction services have also grown massively. In our society, every problem calls forth its equal and supposedly opposite bureaucracy, the ostensible purpose of which is to solve the problem.
But the bureaucracy quickly develops a survival instinct, and so no more wishes the problem to disappear altogether than the lion wishes to kill all the gazelle in the bush and leave itself without food.
In short, the bureaucracy of drug addiction needs drug addicts far more than drug addicts need the bureaucracy of drug addiction.
The propaganda, assiduously spread for many years now, is that heroin addiction is an "illness". This view serves the interests both of the addicts who wish to continue their habit while placing the blame for their behaviour elsewhere, and the bureaucracy that wishes to continue in employment, preferably for ever and at higher rates of pay.
Viewing addiction as an illness automatically implies there is a medical solution to it. So, when all the proposed "cures" fail to work, addicts blame not themselves but those who have offered them ineffectual solutions.
And for bureaucracies, nothing succeeds like failure. The Government spends more than a quarter of a billion pounds a year on drug treatment in the UK, despite there being little evidence of any reduction in the number of addicts.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
As some one who has been clean and sober for over 6 years
It does not start out as an illness but it becomes one in short order
Was it helped by the government?
If a government is going to spend money to try to end drug usage, treatment programs are 20x better than the criminalization of drugs. All this does is builds in an abnormal profit for the growers and dealers and makes it worth killing over.
Nobody calls nicotine addiction a disease.
I personally quit using cocaine thanks to programs available at my university (which I suppose is a combination of private and public funds, but in the end it was a state school and I assume was primarily funded by the government). I think without that easily accessible help I would not be a successful business owner paying back what I owe to society today.
And believe me, after I paid my taxes this year I am quite sure I’ve paid back most of what I owe!
Addiction is simply the failure to make the right decisions....nothing more, nothing less.”
So...........whose fault is that, I wonder???
So...........who should pay the bill, I wonder???
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I’m tired of picking up the bill for losers.
I agree.
I doubt lions spend much time pondering this issue.
Here’s my deal. If you do drugs, you don’t belong in this country. Don’t go to jail, don’t pay a fine and don’t expect to get the govt to treat you. Just leave.
No, but smokers are often viewed as subhumans lower than child mollestors. And I don't even smoke.
Not everyone is born prescient. A man drinking his first beer doesn’t think he will become an alcoholic anymore than a man cutting up his first line of coke thinks he will be spending his entire paycheck on powder in 6 months. It may be his own fault that he tried it in the first place but he did not walk into the situation knowing he would become a burden to society. He can only hope that society will pay him the favor of having faith in him and offer him the opportunity to become a productive person again.
thank you and no
I agree
How silly. Would you say the same thing about alcoholics? Do you think your average alcoholic says to himself, “Gosh, I wonder how I can become a burden to everyone I know? Ah yes, drinking all day! Hooray, I can finally spite my neighbors!”
I think you don’t understand the pharmacology and psychology of addiction. Addiction is a very real physical and psychological process and it becomes uncontrollable without professional intervention in most cases.
he can say whatever he wants. The question is what is our society willing to tolerate and when will people learn to be responsible for themselves instead of expecting everything to come their way?
The fact is that illegal drug users quickly become inured to an anti-social lifestyle, which makes them more likely to engage in criminal behavior and less likely to seek effective solutions to their problems.
I can understand the desire of those in society not to want to legitimize drug use, but those same people should accept that they are driving away many who could be saved from "hitting bottom."
WWJD?
LOL, our "society" "tolerates" the killing of the unborn. And you want to exile drug users? Good luck with that.
This is likely the most intelligent thing said on this thread thus far.
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