this is a bit contraversial, but i personally think it would help.
make drugs legal.
i think that if they did this, they could provide and thus regulate and tax drugs…they could even experiment to mitigate some of the worst effects. also, they could provide help for people who have trouble and ACCURATE information for those that are curious.
Holland seems to be doing quite well with their marijauna legalisation, for example.
there’s a difference between “hard” drugs and marijuana, obviously, but education of users plus some good science going into it could help as i say above.
the reasons this is contraversial are obvious. some Christians, maybe even on this site, would feel better if alcohol or nicotine were also banned.
personally, that isn’t my position. i think people ought to have informed choice about what they put into their bodies…and that the freedom to do unhealthy stuff can be important (if i’m down, chocolate helps, for example…and though there are good things in chocolate…that’s a fair dose of sugar!).
my belief is that banning things, like censorship, simply drives problems underground. letting things remain in the open means we’re all aware…and we can act appropriately with that knowledge. i feel that this has a real knock-on affect for many people in poverty (to bring this back on topic), as many turn to these things to cope with a difficult life. the fact it eventually makes life MORE difficult is lost on people in deep depression etc, who just want to ease the pain.
these people then fall through the cracks. due to their problems, they may become criminals…or may develop mental illnesses that impede their ability to function at all in society.
they also finance people who make their money through organised crime. these people are hard/impossible to police…but would have a huge dent in their profits if drugs became legal in regulated situations where people could freely get their fix and could rely on it being quality, not cut with various things.
if we removed the infrastructure that ironically protected organised crime that preys on people in poverty while forcing users to fall through the cracks…we might be able to tackle some of these problems.
i’m not saying we leave them with bad drug dependancies…but i’m saying we stop criminalising them.
this does seem to be helping in countries where they’ve removed drug controls…
given how much money is wasted trying to fight the “war on drugs”, and how much they could make if they got into the business…it seems madness.
then a large chunk of poor people could also get the help they need to fix their circumstances…