lil angel15
Bluelight Crew
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Drug epidemic makes us sick
Terry Sweetman
August 05, 2007 12:00am
DRUGS, illegal drugs. Don't use them, never have. Yet just about every day, there is some kind of intrusion on the margins of my life by some cretin who sinks a needle into his or her arm, snorts some toxic vapour or scrambles his or her brains with glue or paint fumes.
Or some marijuana-smoking clown topples over the edge into psychosis or a dangerous schizophrenic episode.
Home invasion is a neighbourhood sport in some suburbs, driving a wedge of fear between the elderly and teenagers. However, most turn out to be drug-related raids or get-square assaults over grubby money.
We have become so inured to drugs and violence, drugs and robbery and drugs and neglect that we have started to confuse victims and perpetrators.
We are routinely invited to show mercy on addicts for their transgressions. But I am fast running out of patience with the concept of pity for those who have no one to blame but themselves for their misery.
Only last week, a court was asked to show mercy to one William John Minter, a bloke who did two separate 10-year terms for armed robbery and was recently found with a stash of heroin and cocaine.
I could only roll my eyes as I read that a shrink had found the poor soul was "irrevocably institutionalised".
He was given five years in the slammer to be suspended after four months.
So an institutionalised man with a history of armed robbery and a liking for extremely heavy drugs will be out for Christmas. Pointless.
It's become so bad that judges can pick amphetamine freaks just by looking at their charge sheets, according to Judge Julie Dick, who gave a young toe-rag by the name of Django Dziduch a three-year stretch for a string of offences including armed robbery, sneak thieving, and assault. Yet he will be eligible for parole in October. Pointless.
Not only did speed encourage people to steal to fund buying, she said, but it gave them a feeling of invulnerability that made them bold.
Maybe, but it doesn't make them very ambitious. Last week two heroes wielding sticks held up a store. Drugs.
And then there was the woman who injected her teenage daughter with speed to keep her alert for a shift at a fast-food restaurant.
This 34-year-old so-called mother was given a year but will be out after two months. Pointless.
There's no profit in lambasting judges, who are hamstrung by laws, precedents, practicalities and the pointlessness of most punishments.
And there is no point in pretending that junkies have any control over their lives or that they necessarily deserve mercy. Stupidity must come with a price.
The war against drugs around the world has done for addiction what the invasion of Iraq has done for democracy.
This war catches a lot of small fry, occasionally nabs a kingpin, pushes up the street price of the drug of the moment and never keeps up with the inventiveness of the lab-rats and their suicide-of-choice chemicals.
If as many people died, were neglected, enfeebled, terrorised or orphaned by disease as they are by drugs, the use of drugs, the pursuit of drugs and the abuse of drugs, we would declare a national emergency.
If it were a plague, we would lock up the carriers of contagion, forcibly treat them, and keep them contained until they no longer posed a risk.
In the hysteria over terrorism, we have accepted an erosion of our liberties and handed over matters of life and death to people we don't know, don't much trust and don't much like. Yet we are not prepared to take measures even half as tough against a scourge that costs more lives and misery than mad Osama bin Laden could dream about.
If we don't beat the drug plague that is destroying our society, Osama and his pals can sit back and watch.
Sunday Mail