Ah well, nobody's really interested. Who cares, it's only junkies ..... The situation of the opiate addict, UK, 2011, is not a million miles dissimilar from that the Jew, Germany, 1933.
Spot-on and thank you for having the courage to say this. The Nazi holocaust wasn't the worst thing that ever happened in history, and it certainly isn't the worst thing that ever will happen. All it takes in order to perpetrate a great evil with the blessing of society at large, is to convince a majority that some minority are less than human. And today, drug addicts are definitely being treated as
untermenschen.
Part of the problem is the idea that "being drug-free" is a desirable thing
per se. I am not sure that it is. Prohibition has messed everything up, and most of the social problems associated with "drug use" are really due to (1) people knowing they are already breaking one law and so having fewer qualms about breaking others (especially with lesser penalties); (2) dealers selling poor-quality product at inflated prices because they know the penalty is no worse; (3) users occasionally chancing upon a batch that is purer than they expected, and overdosing. The use of injection as a delivery method -- it may be the most efficient one in terms of getting the maximum amount of dope into the bloodstream, which becomes the prime concern when prices are inflated, but it makes it very easy accidentally to overdose; (4) people being deterred from seeking help at an early stage because they do not want to embarrass themselves or betray their friends.
Somewhere in my stash of old VHS recordings is a cassette with a (kids') TV series about a future chocolate ban, and the consequences. It should have been required viewing for everyone who thinks that drug prohibition achieves anything. The premise is, a few years into the future, the British government bans chocolate for the common good. Incidents are depicted such as people buying badly-adulterated illegal chocolate, and a criminal gang taking over a small unauthorised chocolate production operation. When I watched it, I was naïve enough to think that people would understand what it meant, but it seems that even then the prohibitionist propaganda machine was working hard.
We
should be punishing junkies who steal to feed their habit more for the stealing than for the possession; but there are people who really believe that taking drugs and harming nobody but yourself (and even then, not very much; opiates, if not adulterated, are similar to naturally-occurring chemicals in the body) is worse than stealing from others. We
should be grateful that someone is looking to moderate their use at all and offering them discreet help, not forcing them to discontinue it altogether and turn their connections in to the authorities while parading them around as an example. We
should be punishing dealers who adulterate the product they sell much more harshly than those who don't. But if you try that, somebody out there will say "No, I
want there to be that danger. It's
right that junkie scum should risk dying every time they score. It
should be there to deter people."
They have managed to convince themselves that junkies are not human beings. And there's also an entire industry devoted to getting fat off all this. To them, we're not human beings; we are a mere means to an end.
Now, with thanks to Shakespeare and the power of sed(1):
Hath not a junkie eyes? Hath not a junkie hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a non-junkie is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
