Carlos J wrote:Royal24s wrote:Carlos J wrote:Roddy wrote: Who is your best chewer of khat?
Do you mean most successful or one with most élan, Roddy?
Slience on names but many 'successful' in their fields.
Agricultural workers then.
I can remember when lots of professional footballers and boxers smoked, but that wasn't the secret of their success .
Drugs are bad, kids !
Seriously though, Carlos, I've seen plenty of youngsters being dissected on slabs before their 20th birthday because they listened to talk like that, and I've seen, ( and arrested), some very rich and famous music stars for drugs. I suppose this latter group are successful depending upon how you judge success but the difference is that they can afford to book themselves into some Swiss clinic when it's threatening their lives,and the poor little fuckers from council estates who followed their example could only afford to die in a cubicle in the toilets at Piccadilly Circus after they'd fucked their lives.
Drugs are the single biggest driver of crime and if we had a government which cared about its people they would wipe it out mercilessly.
The gradual decent into widespread drug abuse is also a major factor in dumbing down and the degradation of our young people into tatooed idiots with rings through their noses and hair dyed in colours which don't actually occur in hair ! They are worth more than that.
You make fair points, Royals, as commonly known about drugs.
A slight dig (no pun) saying agricultural workers can be overlooked. No, many I know who have taken khat are some lawyerly like yourself, some err maybe to your disdain, authors and TV presenters, and some medically trained. And some like err me.
It's too late and not about tomorrow to get into a drugs debate which is long running. But I will say it is free will. People for millennia have taken narcotics, natural and now sadly mostly man-made. One could ponder cultures japing merrily along destroyed by others with their deities.
I would not decry no man the opportunity to experiment himself. Why not? For wisdom is to be found. The history of drug users' contribution to society shows that.
As flipside, we have some in society addicted. Why do the government not care, you say?Keeping the masses controlled and err monged when decriminalising could bring in much coin? This ain't the US and socalled crack control of the masses. Or is it?
Free will will not tend to a nation of junkies, same as all day pub opening did not lead to a nation of jakeys. Support those addicted, free those criminalised users and convict those who make the most coin.
I doubt drugs are responsible for trends of tattooing and piercing. My simple experience shows that. Also doubtful for the socalled dumbing down of society, many other factors may be responsible if even true.
There's a hell of lot more.
Well, surely agricultural workers do dig don't they ?
That wasn't a dig at all though, it was a small joke that's all. In fact ,some of the greatest people I've ever known have been agricultural workers or colliers , so that'd be no dig at all.
I'm not at all about grading people on the basis of their income or social status, which are quite incidental to their value as people. There are far more important things.
My own ancestry is as impressive as it gets, but by the early 20th century they'd gradually lost their lands and money and so I was only educated by the generosity of miners contributions and scholarships in a Welsh Grammar School. That is maybe why I care so much for regular people and seek to protect their interests ,( as opposed to what they sometimes think are their interests). It might be the reason,( and I only just think of this now), that when I progressed a bit into places where I witnessed the tricks and lies used to control them , that I got angry about it and remain so.
I digress because I must stress that you'll never hear me denigrate regular people in ordinary jobs.
Anyway, back to the point. I also know plenty of professional and media people who misuse drugs, and that just proves my point that they're no more intrinsically worthy or clever than anyone else - just in a better position to get away with it perhaps. It's no argument to support the practise though.
As far as being a driver for crime, I wasn't talking about possessing or taking the stuff, which is a bigger crime against the people who do it than anyone else. I was talking about the other crimes they commit because of their involuntary compulsion for more of it once they are hooked, not to mention the human degradation of getting into that state.
I was also talking about the organised criminals , ( including those who would surprise you), who profit by unimaginable sums from the existence of this plague and, being criminals, use it to propagate other crimes and suffering through the world.
Your argument on freedom of choice is a legitimate one, though I'm not sure how much you apply it to other freedoms, but I wonder whether we can demand a freedom which directly leads to so much suffering , including death, to so many others who are innocent and unconnected with it ?
We hear ridiculous arguments that smoking or not wearing seat belts must be banned because of greatly exaggerated claims of third party harm, which are successfully employed to withhold those freedoms, yet we don't see our governments taking effective steps to stop the drug trade. ( Some may wonder why that is).
In short, I must disagree with your justification of drugs. They are certainly a bad thing and we cannot regard them as anything but a plague upon humanity.
At some point we might consider the right of individuals to consume illicit drugs. I could accept that, but firstly they'd have to stop it for a while so they'd be in their right minds when they made such a self destructive decision . Actually, I doubt that very many people would take such a choice if they had the natural clarity of thought which would return if they stopped intoxicating themselves for a while.
