The Spice Of Life, Or Death? - Part 3

Information Accuracy: Truth is very important. In fact, crucial. Imagine, if your senses lied to you, you wouldn't know where you stood. Information accuracy is an art, and it is an art, as not everyone can do it (or is prepared to do it). Keeping the bugs out and debugging the ones you have, is something we have to work at! It takes a conscious effort to tell the truth and it gets harder as you raise the bar; that is when the stakes are higher. We are fed all sorts of nonsense in this world from various vested interests. People pervert the truth to try and get their own way. Information is like the food that you eat. You have to try and keep the goodness and excrete the crap. The difficulty, at times, is discerning which is which. The trouble is, so many people in this world, knowingly, or unknowingly, promote crap and human beings can be very gullible and very stupid.

But They Do! You can actually programme a human being to blow themself up in a place full of innocent women and children, believing they are doing God's work and so will be greatly rewarded in paradise with harem of virgins. You couldn't make it up! But they do! Misinformation is a serious hazard to all humanity and people who spread misinformation, whether deliberately, or unintentionally, contribute to the considerable heartache and misery and the mess we see. We can't even trust those in positions of authority to tell the truth, as we see world leaders blatantly lying, to suit themselves, and denying their wrongdoing. Some spread their malicious and unhelpful propaganda by shutting down independent news' channels and even the internet to try and prevent the real truth from getting out there. Not very helpful! Sad examples of human beings messing up our world!

Par For The Course? Unfortunately, deliberately, or otherwise, people do get indoctrinated with misinformation and when any establishment, or established organisation, is promoting a particular line, people expect to be able to trust what is being said. Unfortunately, this is far from always the case. Sometimes that establishment is simply mistaken. Sometimes that establishment is deliberately lying. With regard to our own establishment, there is a truth about drugs, however, what we hear so much of the time, is simply clouded and distorted misinformation, confused and untrue. For example: so many people think that smoking cannabis automatically leads on to taking heroin. I've heard it said many times by people who don't know any better. Why don't they know any better? Because they have no real credentials. No personal experience upon which to judge. Just like those sucked in by religious misinformation, they believe what they are told and go about 'spreading the word'. It's amazing how many people have been conned with this ridiculous belief. It's like saying drinking beer makes you an alcoholic. Of course, this CAN be true. But it's NOT par for the course. Yes, cannabis CAN lead on to other things, if you let it. If you want it. If you don't know any better. Or if you've been conned and misled. BUT it's NOT par for the course. And why on Earth would it be! The two things are completely unrelated and unconnected, except by the way WE, that is society, mismanage the controlled substance situation.

Life-Skills Education: Now some drugs are notably bad and you wouldn’t want to encourage people to go down these roads to begin with, and this is where responsible education should come in. We DO need life-skills education in schools, and drug education, including the effects and dangers of alcohol, as well as nicotine, sugar and gambling, need to be included in this agenda, along with other crucial topics pertaining to a healthy and socially acceptable lifestyle. Society conditions people into drinking alcohol, with young people growing up thinking it is the grownup thing to do. It used to be the same with smoking. However, past enjoying a moderate drink at social events, alcohol has no real positive benefits for the user. Let's face it, being too drunk is no fun, for you, or for the people around you! It does generate money for the industry and the taxman, but the negative effects on society are seriously notable and the cost to the taxpayer is considerable. Unlike alcohol, natural cannabis doesn't have ANY anti-social effects. If you smoke it a lot, it can make you more forgetful about certain things, a by-product of its therapeutic nature perhaps, however, this is about as bad as it gets. On the plus side, unlike alcohol, natural cannabis actually does have real positive benefits. It has positive medicinal benefits and positive psychological benefits. It is relaxing, mentally therapeutic, thought provoking, peace inciting, inspirational and creative, and makes people more social, as opposed to anti-social. What's not to like?

The Hard Way! We obviously don't want people to overdo their drinking and become alcoholics, and we obviously don't want people becoming victim to hard drugs of any sort. All too often, when they do, it's because they don't know any better and that's because we don't educate them. Our fault! Or it's because they're forced to mix in the same illegal circles, where other drugs are also prevalent. Again, our fault! Or it's because there's no drug-discrimination, and no proper differentiation between drugs. Again, our fault. Or it's because cannabis isn't as bad as the establishment tries to make out and when people smoke it and find this out, they assume the same is true of other illegal drugs. By the time they find out the truth, it's too late! Again, our fault! No heroin addict wants to be a heroin addict, but by the time they find this out, it's too late. Show young people the effects of heroin and they won't go near it! But we don't. We let people find out the hard way! THEN we turn our back on them, refuse to help them and consign them to a miserable existence and life of crime. This then drags other innocent members of the public into the equation, causing heartache and misery for ordinary people, saps police and judicial system resources and costs the taxpayer significantly (BBC News (29/08/24) reports; "Shoplifting costs the country billions of pounds. Experts say that 70% of shoplifters are addicts").

Is An Illness! Alternatively, if we don't force addicts to steal to fund their addiction, we force them down a road of prostitution. Nice!! And this is how our politicians think we should manage the situation? Society needs to understand that heroin addiction is an illness and needs to be treated as an illness. Yes, it may be a self-inflicted illness, like many in society, but like any illness, self-inflicted or otherwise, people who are sick need to be given the drugs they need to treat the symptoms. This is the correct and moral approach that we apply with ANY illness and this equivalent act of kindness, compassion and understanding would actually save the taxpayer immense amounts of money every year. It would save addicts being driven to commit crime or acts of prostitution and save them from the unsupported, hopeless despair and misery. It would save ordinary decent people from getting dragged into the equation by being robbed. It would guarantee that those in need get proper quality-controlled medication, which could be graded in strength, to help addicts to get off the drug, or learn to manage and live with it if they can't - and it won't be contaminated. It would also guarantee that they get the proper support and encouragement, in their hour of need, to help them try and deal with the very difficult predicament they now find themselves in. Also, without the support from existing addicts, the illegal heroin market would diminish, meaning much less chance of other naive people getting dragged into the trap. What's not to like?

Human Rights: The fact is, although it doesn't stop various thugs and bullies all over this planet, no government or human being has a right to dictate to another human being in matters that only affect the individual. What we would call lifestyle choice. Areas such as hobbies, interests, sexual preference, drug preference, personal opinion, all come into this category. Things that do not create victims, do not harm other people and that are between consenting adults. These should be strictly the choice of an individual, without interference, persecution, or condemnation from others. This is called freewill and God gave it to every person. Although some see fit to try and take this away, it doesn't make it right to do so and the struggle goes on all over our planet on behalf of our freewill, our human rights and our personal autonomy. This is a moral issue and just as, in the UK, we now 'allow' people to be gay without persecution, alongside the appropriate education, we need to do the same where personal drug use is concerned. The whole planet needs to wake up to this and there are significant benefits for doing so, globally and here in the UK!

Tackling Real Crime: Police here are already significantly stretched. Since 'care in the community', they are also expected to deal with significant numbers of mental health problems on the street. These were always, of course, compounded by alcohol, but now also by the advent of skunk and spice. If the police weren't being instructed to persecute people for lifestyle choice, they could probably double their effective manpower. That would greatly suit the majority of the public, because at the moment, there are REAL issues with REAL crimes that are NOT being addressed. Serious crimes that police are slow to respond to, not able to deal with, or not able to even attend because they're short of resources. I also personally think it's unacceptable to expect police officers, especially female police officers, to have to single crew patrol cars, but they do at times, because they have to. The fact is, the police are always up against shortages of manpower. So, not wasting time and resources on persecuting people for crimes that are not actually crimes, because there is no victim, just a difference of opinion or lifestyle choice, would help greatly. The solution is simple. Let people do what they want to do, if they're not hurting anyone else. If we stop interfering with a person's rights and allow people their freedom of choice, we will considerably raise respect for the police and the law, and have more resources to tackle real crime. That's surely in everyone's best interests? Again, what's not to like?