I honestly don't know if meth/amphetamine can be used in a regular fashion with any safety; but there is obviously a lot that can be done to reduce harm (which is sadly absent from so much of the discussion nationally regarding the "meth problem").
Here is the thing, there are hundreds of thousands of meth users who aren't hurting people. They're not punching their partners, or going on five day benders. I know so many 'normal' people who use meth like our parents used valium (mummies little helper). They take it regular, and could be classified as addicts but they're using it to get through the rat fucking race. The never ending cleaning of our houses, clothes, errands to run, bills to pay, kids to play with, homework and then work.
No wonder there are so many prescription opiate users. They either use opiates or meth/speed to get on with life.
The small fraction of people who are violent are in that position because of deep rooted emotional problems. They have dysfunctional relationships, poor housing and employment stability, suffered abuse and harm and in turn when under stress, exposed to mental health issues, combined with a lack of sleep all combines into a powder keg of violence.
If you can control those factors. If you can bring those people into a controlled environment where they are surrounded by help you can easily transform them. To get them in the door however we need to use meth, heroin or crack (and let me tell you, crack is coming back big time in Sydney). Surround people with medical help, education facilities and early intervention services. You know when your a young men, with a baby, poor employment options, unstable housing and all you've known is drugs, drinking and the violence of western sydney, is it little wonder that when your stressed, and fighting with your partner that you'll end up lashing out? Where are the services when they had a baby that saw a nurse help them deal with a crying baby. Where are the services that taught this young man how to act, how to work? He didn't learn it from his parents. They were just as fucked up as him.
The problem is priorities. We have the money, we have the resources, the experts and even the facilities. The problem is we spent over $5b in 2014 on NSW police. The attorney's general department got $5b to do prisons and the legal system. Last year 110,000 people were arrested on drug related matters (approx 40% of arrests). NOw operational budgets are difficult to estimate but if we do it on an arrests divide by budget we get 40-50% of the operational budgets of these agencies are allocated to managing drug related matters. Of course the bottom line doesn't include the money spent in relation to emergency health, the indirect billions lost on productivity, and of course the billions that go out the door to the mafia, cartels and triads.
We spent basically $10-15b this year on drugs in NSW. And we've done that every year for decades. We've failed, miserably, we have a parasitic class of law enforcement officials, lawyers, judges and correctional officials who are sucking mindlessly, like a drug addict, from the public purse. Think about it. We spent $100b between 2000-2010. We could have built ten fast rail system with that. We could have funded early intervention services for families at risk of abuse and domestic violence. The list is endless.
Instead we gave it to a pack of leaches. Parasites. Who prey on the sick and vunerable, calling them junkies and curb stomping us at the sametime. I find particular egregious, the learned gentlemen of the court. The judges, the QCs, SCs and so on, looking down their nose as they judge men only to retire to their chambers to sniff and shoot up to their hearts content.
I know that the judges in Sydney are a dirty crooked bunch. I had a friend who had in fact taken out an insurance policy. By sending the judges to holidays at the gay resorts of QLD, setting them up with as much MDMA and toy boys they could take he effectively ensured he stayed out of prison. Indeed when he was found with a commercial quantity of narcotics, a very large amount, he was given a good behaviour bond (though his employees were fucked badly).
It needs to change. We need to change. I just can't accept our brothers and sisters dying just because the money was given to jackbooted leaches who think their doing gods work arresting all those dirty fucking junkies.
In a hundred year society will look back on the authorities in the same way we look back at the Victorians and how they treated mental health problems in the 19th century.
