I have no problem with drug addicts. I believe they should have as much of the stuff they can shove down thier neck or up their, wherever. I fact they should have just a bit more. ;-) Then advertise the fact loudly on Radio, TV & in the Paper that another drug addict have passed on to Nivana. Whose next? That would cure the problem really fast.

It would be cheaper medically, less strain on society & resourses & the streets & your property would be safer. The solution is a little hard on the family but they'd get over it. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. It would be a great example to anyone wanting to get into the drug game.

Anyone caught pushing drugs of course would be put on an deserted Island & left fend for themselves for the rest of their life.

No pity.

More drivel from another extreme right cultural warrior. Did you see that website family security matters, with links to the US religious right?

I note the writer mentions about addiction problems being man-made, well that part is right for the use of law to prohibit opiate use, particularly non-medical use. Perhaps many of the current consequences shown in relation to what cultural warriors describe as a "drug problem" could be done away with by no longer persisting with obsolete laws persecuting the one who indulges because s/he offends protestant puritan sensibilities or has opted out of being a cog in the machine or sycophantic drone.

I suppose but, fear is the stock in trade of a cultural warrior writer, Dalrymple probably pumps out this drivel through fringe publishers and crackpot websites as it would not stand up to peer review.

More drivel from another extreme right cultural warrior. Did you see that website family security matters, with links to the US religious right?

I note the writer mentions about addiction problems being man-made, well that part is right for the use of law to prohibit opiate use, particularly non-medical use. Perhaps many of the current consequences shown in relation to what cultural warriors describe as a "drug problem" could be done away with by no longer persisting with obsolete laws persecuting the one who indulges because s/he offends protestant puritan sensibilities or has opted out of being a cog in the machine or sycophantic drone.

If they want to [take opiate] then stand back and let them. We do the same for liquor and tobacco, both of which are intrinsically more dangerous, and in the case of the latter, dangerous even in modest quantities. However, opiate producers [not drug companies, the other lot] and their consumers don't have mates in high places like booze and tobacco pushers.

I suppose but, fear is the stock in trade of a cultural warrior writer, Dalrymple probably pumps out this drivel through fringe publishers and crackpot websites as it would not stand up to peer review.

SECOND HAND REPORTING OF OTHERS OPINIONS with the usual redneck specificy of singling out one drug

there are many addictive drugs[booze hound withdrawels are reportedly as severe as heroin] but then so ntoo the 'perscribed legal? drugs[noting asdverse reaction to PERSCRIBED medication alone causes the equivelent of 5 jumbo loads TO DIE each day [DEATH by perscribed drugs alone]

australian drug figures state 19,000 deaths by drugs[heroin caused 114 marijuana NONE
[but 48,000] busts for drugs[46,000 for dope[marijuana] puts the spin into proportion as does the ammount of inhjury caused by BOOZE

in 1999 37,000 drug convictions in qld alone resulted in 54 million REVENUE from fines[legal;'aid'? is a cash cow elitist lurk here too[300 for a guilty plea or for the whole court case [what would you as a lawyer do?

well they do [lawyers convince 20 out of 21 to plead guilty[asnd collect their legal; aid fee's at the rate of 10 perday[$3000] for a mornings work
[thats why no lawyer disputes that a plant is not a drug]just as asprin in willow bark isnt 'asprin'[the drug] a drug is a pure refined product[a poppy plant isnt heroin it contains opium that is refined into it]

but quote from post>>..To be sure, to use heroin is to invite many negative health consequences nbut is treating opiate addiction as a disease helpful?..>>

its an addiction [ie it IS a medical problem]

not a police problem [unless there is a victim

[no victim means no crime] but no lawyer is going to demand a victim on his/her big payOFF day, thus takes his share of the legal aid and shuts up ,while the state criminalises its own young for being dependant on a drug

who cares what selective delusions Dr Dalrymple states

drugs are a medical not a legal issue[and the real problem is the LEGAL deaths[prozac alone has killed over 10,000]

yes lock up the drug czars NOW, how long can this 'LEGAL ' murder be allowed go on?[and the debate held to silence]

What is the point of this rant?

Actually Dalrymple is an intelligent man who works in the psychiatric field in the UK, and has as such seen how awful it really is out there, especially amongst the demoralized down and outs in UK cities.

It is a pity that he keeps such bad company and is lauded by people such as terps and the appalling company that terps associates with at "family security".

I am very interested in the security of my family and circles of friends too. And I can assure you that they would all find the politics of terps and his friends at so called "family security" absolutely appalling---psycho-paths all the way down.

Their mind-set being the principal causative factor of most or all of our inter-relatecd troubles.

The wonder is that such an intelligent man as Dalrymple allows himself to associate with and be coopted by such nut cases.

Meanwhile our entire "culture" runs on drugs and our addictions to them. All of which are destructive of the bodies of those that use them---ALL.

Coffe, tea, chocolate, cola, tobacco, alcohol, prescription drugs and the entire cocktail of illegal drugs.

How much prime agricultural land is used to produce the raw materials for these common addictive drugs?

And what about the golden rule--those that have the gold make and enforce the rules. And define what is acceptable.

BIG PHARMA is one of the worlds largest and most profitable industries. And as such they have no interest whatsoever in encouraging people to take REAL responsibility for their health and well-being.

Which always begins by what you put in your mouth, especially on a regular basis.

Big-pharma always propagandises against "alternative" non-drug forms of healing which usually demand that people begin to take responsibility for their health by changing their life-patterns altogether. Exercise and diet for instance.

The white-coated big-pharma doctor says a few magic words, orders some hi-tech tests and then gives you some magic pills

End of story.

No demand either implicit or explicit to change what you are doing---especially what you regularly put in your mouth

Speaking of the "religious" right in the USA, I would argue that a NECESSARY prerequsite for the emergence of some kind of balanced sanity in the USA body politic (and the world altogether) is the breaking of their entirely pernicious and devisive influence.

Why and how is it that this entirely godless right wing religiosity is so noticable and seemingly entrenched in the USA?

There are right-wing religionists in other parts of the world including Australia (witness Bill Muehlenberg et al) but fortunately they never have the same pernicious influence.

The real issue here is why does Online Opinion publish such drivel. Both the content and the writing are like graffiti, though this is unfair to the graffiti that makes some useful social observations and/or has some artistic merit.

Dear OO Editors, is it the silly season of Xmas that makes you scrape the bottom of the barrel for pieces like this? Much more of this and and I'll be cancelling my subscription.

Whatever we call the habitual use of heroin or any other “substance”, pretending it is a “disease” is the usual cop out advocated by those who think that people are not responsible for the consequences of their actions.

I do not believe being addicted to anything is a disease.

Being addicted is an extension of someone making a conscious decision and then denying they have a problem.

The choice is with the addict to fix their addiction.

There is also a choice with those, if any, who are in the addicts traditional “support network”, to exercise the “tough love” needed to stand back and watch someone hit bottom.

You do not fix addiction by pretending it is a disease.

You fix addiction by deciding to deny its hold on your body and by deciding not to enable someone in their addiction.

col tough love means letting others suffer

[aint that a sign of enlightend times]where can a mindset like that end[take aids you [not you col] a metophoricle 'you''junkie' or you 'homo' caused your own sickness so TOUGH LOVE.

or your worry has caused your own head ache[so tough love]
or you did sport [you risked injury[so tough love] you caused it YOU got it[tough love[why we dont do tough love on these bankers scaming us for bailouts]

hey you non swimmer [you didnt learn to swim[so tough love]

you should be able to see this 'tough on druggies' is only deneying helping them
[please note smokers/drinkers get their fix of nicoteen caffeene[no worries]i get my FIX no worries[you get your one glass of wine fixation[no worries]

why should drug users get tough love?
what has my need for drugs to do with you?

what next i cant eat transfats[ok you faties TOUGH LOVE]

same with you heart attack armchair sporting types tough love

[AND YOU IGNORANTS WHO DONT KNOW LAW [TOUGH LOVE]

WHERE DOES THIS TOUGH LOVE END?

i been ridiculed for my whole adult life because my drug is able to be grown for free[yet must only be bought from the local approved drug supplier at over the price of gold[who gets it straight from the feds[fbi shipped world wide by rendition filghts,straight from the war zone]

who are you to restrict supply so my 'drug'is worth more than gold [while 'yours'can be advertised on tv]or subsidiesed by govt, because a docter had compassion

yet mine gives me jail and 'tough love'
[read war on drug [non approved] drugusers BY THEIR OWN GOVT]

Uog “col tough love means letting others suffer”

I know what “tough love” is.

And it is the case that to do otherwise is to enable, facilitate and prolong the suffering of the addict from their product of dependency.

I talk about it almost every day with someone close to me who is dealing with an addict. An addict who is following in his long departed father’s footsteps.

If you have any doubt and want to challenge what I have said, I suggest you first talk to someone who is a member of Al-Anon, the organization for the family members of alcoholics (there is an alternative organization for the families of narcotic specific addicts but they do the same thing and beat the same drum).

For families of addicts, ”dealing with addiction” demands they decide what of the addicts activities are acceptable and what are not.

An addict stealing from his family is clearly, engaging in an activity which is beyond that which is acceptable.

An addict abusing a family member, either physically or emotionally, is not behaving in an acceptable manner.

An addict destroying someone else’s property or threatening their safety is not behaving in an acceptable manner.

An addict remains responsible for their abusive behavior, irrespective of their addiction.

and the family / network member is responsible for deciding where to draw the line beyond which the addict will not be permitted to go before the “tough love” option is adopted.

We all have rights and that includes the right to disengage from those who are self-destructive or are dangerous to be around.

so "tough love means letting others suffer"

failure to adopt the principles of "tough love" can mean that innocent, otherwise unaddicted parties are the ones who suffer.

Right with you Col. Tough love All the Way.

It's the addicts loved one that has to suffer. My nextdoor neighbour is a victem of an addict. Her mother. They can never get ahead because they she steals their rent money, steals the TV, camera, lawnmower to cater for her addiction. When she's down she comes around & screams at them, smashes windows etc. The neighbourhood has helped them by mowing their lawn & replacing the windows etc, so we are suffering too. That's just one addict, who claims that her right to get a fix when she wants it. Addicts are selfish people who only think of themselves. You are right Col it's not the addict who is the victem it's the people around them. This poor little girl comes over just to cry & cry sometimes. It's so sad. Her husband is waiting on a back operation & is bed ridden so he's no help. He's under the public system so God only knows when his Op will be. The money that goes to look after addicts could have been used for his operation.

So stuff 'em. Tough love... way to go & damm all addicts to Hell. Read the first post. That's the only way to handle these %^#@*&.

The article begins with an overwrought analogy (Holocaust) and ends without suggesting any course of action, apart from spurning addicts and the horse they rode in on.

I can't tell also what the author is prescribing as an alternative to the safe injecting rooms. Before these the addicts simply overdosed. "Let them" seems to be the answer.

Thanks to Inner-Sydney based transsexual, indigent outcast progeny of merchant family (write us an article sometime) for pointing out the origins of this site http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/

Most articles there are written for the reading level of a 12-year old. The section on healthcare suggests America is better off maintaining its focus on war instead of healthcare reform because, get this "What right to we have to pile these massive burdens on our children and grandchildren?" Better to spend it on a voluntary war presumably.

The article doesn't include any facts or figures to support the argument it makes. "Darlymple stands against legalisation. He stands for reason." Because he says he does.

it would be futile to explain to you that heroin costs 2000 a pound from the producer

that one pound refined into heroin would cost about 5 CENTS a dose [if govt supplied the SSh-hit]at 5 cents a dose [about 15 cents per day would ensure NO ONE has to steal from their loved ones for PAIN relief
#

it is not the drugs that make people steal

its paying more than the price of gold for something that can be suplied for pennies

but sadly govt stooges run that rackett to finance their spying[and for undercover ops]without having to explain to govt where they get their funds
[nor need to explain to govt just egsactly what its doing with all that drug money]

well some of it goes to lobby[some goes to media[some goes to gamble or prostitution ,but think about removing the cost of sustaining this active [enriched] lobby [that are cleaning up from this war on drug users]

that affords the best lobby the best lawyers by doing the worst to the least [that they do to the least they do to him]

Thanks for that Under One God.

What a great suggestion & what a great way to get rid of the addicts. A couple of 10 cent doses & the problem is solved in minutes. No more addicts. A bit of wailing, a bit of sack cloth. A great wake.

& I'm not joking.

Exterminate them JayB? How refined. UOG asks whether it would be more cost effective to supply drugs to addicts. A pertinent question is what percentage of the population is susceptible to addiction? Fifty percent and addiction is a very serious problem. Less than five percent and you need scaremongering fanatics to make it a problem.

So true, Fester. A small portion of people are addicts but this is not the concern of bible thumpers. What gets their goat is that somebody, somewhere, is doing what they want to - perhaps even having fun doing it - and by golly with god on my side I’m going to make them change their ways just you wait and see.

It’s not about how I live my life, it’s about how you live yours. It's what conservatism and its attendant faiths are about. We simply can't have people buying drugs but not paying tax on them you know, it shows moral decrepitude.

Drugs have and will always be around. Better I think to bite the bullet and regulate the entire industry - make them available via prescription only and in the absence of the black market crime figures would fall through the floor. Wouldn’t conservatives love that!

Fester “A pertinent question is what percentage of the population is susceptible to addiction? Fifty percent and addiction is a very serious problem. Less than five percent and you need scaremongering fanatics to make it a problem.”

The question then becomes

“How ‘price elastic’ are narcotics?”

How much of the small percentage of addiction rates are due to the high price of narcotics ?

and should the price of drugs of dependency drop to a few cents a hit, would the number of addicts become “a very serious problem”?


Answer: based on the experience of the late 19th century, cheap opiates and cocaine produced massive numbers of addicts and it was this high rate of addiction which fuelled the demand for legislation against their use.

Certainly, recreational use of narcotics is a ‘price elastic’ pastime.
However, the problem then shifts when
the "addicted" deamnd for narcotics ceases to be ‘price elastic’.

The way to avoid high addiction rates is to keep the recreational price high. The way to encourage high addiction rates is by ensuring the price is low.

Removing the price considerations of recreational narcotics does nothing to diminish the wider debilitating side effects and consequences of addiction which is the primary reason for criminalizing recreational narcotics in the first place.

So do you want to see your children listless, useless, nothing better than social parasites or would you prefer to see them healthy, functioning and contributing to the wider social fabric?

Anyone who thinks the wide spread use of recreational narcotics or drug of dependency is a good thing should see what happens on crystal meth.

A short term high, offset by a rotting head and scabs are just the tip of the problem. Even footie careers have been seen to collapse as a consequence.

Bennie “concern of bible thumpers.”

Would you care to send me a bible to thump, I seem to have forgone using it up until now, at least.

Col

My understanding is that even with legalised and unregulated drugs, it is unlikely that 5% of the population would be drug addicts. And that conclusion comes from a reevaluation of the evidence from opium use in 19th century China.

I also wonder whether addiction is largely innate, with addicts likely to become addicted to legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco. This would make it unlikely that the rate of drug addiction is price dependent. Would anyone on this forum take ice or other illegal drugs for reasons of price or an end to prohibition? I suspect that such people would be in a minority.

Once again, those that subscribe to the idea of us succumbing to "addiction", foolishly ignore the fact that heroin "addicts" have acquired an expensive HABIT which they enjoy but which also proves hard for them to break. Like Col Rouge says, TOUGH!
There is no such thing as addiction, only weak-willed individuals who refuse to curb(self)destructive HABITUAL behaviour. A pox on them all. If we left them alone, the process of natural selection would soon give cause for thought to any potential future users.
To all the socialists out there that would naysay me, a rather large wet raspberry. You are self-deluding at best.
Heroin addicts make a CONSCIOUS choice. Simple solution. Deny them access to any sort of government assistance other than those designed to slap the stupidity out of them. This may hammer home the concept of "consequences". If they ignore that then the gene pool gets reduced. Simple.

(..sits back and waits for foaming lefties...)

Well the addict gene pool was reduced by another one on the weekend. a Young DH high on ICE got himself topped. I bet the Socalist Left Politically Correct crowd & the addicts try to make a victem out of him & give the police a hard time.
I'm with Col Rouge & tRAKKA on this issue. Stuff 'em.

Fester “My understanding is that even with legalised and unregulated drugs, it is unlikely that 5% of the population would be drug addicts.”

That might be what you understand.

What I understand is if you made the cost of a hit of heroin the same as a cigarette, you would end up with addiction rates in line with the wide spread use of cigarettes.

Similarly, 20 years ago Victoria did not have a “Gambling Problem”.

Since fat Joan Kirner legalized poker machines, we seem to have acquired a lot of supposed “gambling addicts” who steal, lie and cheat their way through other peoples’ money.

I have no problem with people gambling, I do myself, occasionally, even had a bet at the races Sunday and actually financed 1/3 my income when a student through regular card schools but we have some folk with (for want of a better term) an addiction gene, which makes them totally incapable of resisting whatever their tiny minds fixate upon.

But we come back the decriminalizing the use of narcotics and the empirical evidence remains the same, regardless of your “understanding”,

If it is addictive and if you make it cheap and make it legal -

There will be a high proportion of dingbats who will spend their every effort trying to get high, ignoring their responsibilities and becoming a parasite on the rest of us.

Someone close to me is doing the tough love with her son. He has burned his bridges more times than is healthy for his mother. He has smashed walls in her house in his drunken and cannabis inflamed rampages, verbally abused, terrified and intimidated her.

She deals with him now the only way she can, to disconnect the phone and refuse his multiple calls for money and to vent his anger at the world, through his alcohol and drug addled delusions,

Tough love is not only the best thing which works for the addict,
it is the ONLY thing which works for the people who love the addict, despite the addiction.

tRAKKA and Jayb thanks for your words of agreemen

Col

"That might be what you understand."

From your own comments you seem to give much weight to the opinions of some 19th century missionaries. Good that you bring up gambling, though. What percentage of the population do you think at risk of becoming problem gamblers? Do you think that Kirner's pokies will lay waste Victoria much like the missionaries claimed that opium would destroy China (and then the Christian world)? Curiously, this website suggests that for the United States, there are 5.5 million pathological and problem gamblers out of a population of over 300 million. 15 million are believed vulnerable to problem gambling.

http://www.clearleadinc.com/site/gambling-addiction.htm

Perhaps you could provide some stats to give some credability to your sermon?

My interest is in maximising benefit and minimising expense, with the proviso of respecting human dignity.

"tRAKKA and Jayb thanks for your words of agreemen"

Can I assume from this that you are advocating extermination for drug addicts, Col?

Hey Fester,

Please try and removing the idea of "addictiveness" from your head.

I repeat, there is no such thing as addiction, merely lack of self-control resulting in destructive habitual behaviour. You probably engage in habitual behaviour yourself everyday. Getting up, preparing for your day which may involve travel. Car, train, ferry or bus, it doesn't matter. Travelling everyday on a bus doesn't make you a bus addict, does it? It's just habitual behaviour which is not so uncomfortable so as to be unbearable.

I'm not for dumping on people's rights to do as they wish, just as long as they know there are consequences.

What people mostly forget is that the claiming of "rights" obligates the "rights" taker to engage in responsible behaviour according to the socially prevalent norm.

I do not condone the idea of exterminating drug users. If they are able to conduct their business without harm or drain upon others in society, then all fine and well. If they cark it, so be it. Self-inflicted injury brought about by poor choices, in my view. So sad, too bad...

tRAKKA

"there is no such thing as addiction"

Does this mean that you are against drug prohibition? Surely the idea that society comprises loads of potential druggies is the foundation of prohibition?