So why are street drugs illegal. I understand with so-called ‘legal highs’ etc., nobody knows what they might do to a person, particularly with long term use. We need to be cautious to protect the young from unknown and untested drugs.
But as for the good old fashioned types – which can be bought on the corner of most high streets in Britain nowadays – why are they illegal?
Pernicious
For now, let’s look at one of the most pernicious of street drugs – heroin. It’s obviously an extremely addictive drug, and I really do not recommend that anyone takes it without a prescription. It is a marvellous pain killer and used in hospitals across the land every day.
Roads to Hell
So it’s not that dangerous when used properly. The greatest threat to the public comes from its addictiveness and the stronger drugs (eg. fentanyl) that it’s sometimes mixed with.
www.theguardian
So how do people become addicts? A certain number get hooked on prescribed morphine from a doctor or hospital. Apparently, after using it for three consecutive days it becomes very difficult to stop. But I don’t believe that’s how most people begin their addiction.
The majority of heroin users were introduced to it by a ‘friend’ or acquaintance who was already working in the ‘heroin industry’.
From pimps to pushers, and users to usurers, it’s been employed as a tool for exploiting the vulnerable for years. While it’s precursor – opium – has been used the same way for hundreds, or possibly thousands of years. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Opium-Warshttps://www.taxjustice.net/2015/02/27/hsbc-and-the-worlds-oldest-drug-cartel/
It’s always been expensive stuff, and not easy to afford if you are unemployed or homeless. So how can someone afford to support such a serious habit when they are skint?
Means to an end
Some will shoplift or commit
If you use prostitutes then you are part of the problem. But I don’t suppose you’d care – you see people as commodities anyway. If you just stayed in and had a wank then this dreadful exploitation of human beings would not be happening. Or even better – try to form meaningful relationships with the people around you. You never know, one of them might like you enough to actually want to have sex with you.
Capitalism
But the simplest way of supporting a habit is to deal the stuff; it probably seems like it’s the most moral option too. The majority of people would choose not to steal, whereas heroin dealing is a logical extension of capitalism. Supply and demand.
Buying low and selling high, making a profit on each transaction. Possibly cutting it with brick dust or rat poison, or even other pharmaceutical opioids to make it more potent. Sounds like a typical entrepreneur – Alan Sugar would be proud – and the Dragons Den should embrace them.
Do we want a solution?
It seems to me that those already addicted are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Surely the answer to many of society’s drug-related problems is for registered heroin addicts to be able to receive safe pharmaceutical grade heroin, from a specially registered doctor, who is authorised to prescribe it on the N.H.S.
Just think about it. If junkies got a regular safe supply from a doctor – for the price of a prescription – there’d be no need for them to deal the stuff to fund their habit.
Furthermore, they wouldn’t be trying to lure kids into a life of smack, and addicts wouldn’t need to go out on the rob or sell their bodies to pay for the gear. This would massively curtail the power of the vicious drug and sex gangs.
Painkiller
Let’s face it nobody starts taking heroin when they are at a good place in their life. It’s a desperate situation that gets people started. Morphine is a painkiller – I believe it mitigates against mental, emotional, and physical pain – which is why it becomes so popular with people who are suffering. Sadly it seems to be so effective that people get hooked very quickly.
I admit I’m no expert, and I have never knowingly taken it – well maybe once in the nineties, in a ‘brown speckled dove’. I have lost friends to heroin. I’ve known users and ex-users – smokers and injectors – and most of them were decent enough people.
Nobody wants to end up as a smack-head and social pariah, but it could happen to anyone. Heroin does not discriminate, it just requires a person to have had enough pain, misery or bad luck in their life – and for it to be offered to them at the wrong time.
A small aside
My daughter fell off a swing and broke her arm when she was about 8 years old. An ambulance was called, and when they turned up they offered her morphine as a pain killer. Okay, so far. But as they were administering it, the paramedics were telling her ‘You’ll like this, it will make you feel really nice’.
They were right, she did like it – she still remembers the high. But how responsible is it for paramedics to act like the morphine marketing team? I know they were doing their job – and generally doing it very well – but should they be telling children, ‘this is morphine it’s really nice, you’ll enjoy it’. For that could very well be the first step on the road to addiction, for an injured impressionable child.
My daughter still remembers the effect, and that was more than 10 years ago.
Time to change the paradigm
Imagine if heroin was available on prescription, from a doctor and specialist, surely crime rates would plummet. Police resources could be redeployed, and there would be far fewer new addicts.
The users could be helped to use it safely, and programmes could be put in place to help addicts quit.
If they did quit, there would not be the pressure from fellow addicts, and old patterns of behaviour, to lure them back. There would also be little financial incentive for old acquaintances to reintroduce them to that paradoxical drug.
Chase jobs not dragons
Apparently, heroin doesn’t necessarily impair your ability to work, so perhaps addicts could be helped to find gainful employment – if they weren’t running around all day chasing their next dragon.
It all just seems so simple.
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Who benefits?
If we remove the possibility of outrageous profit from a drug, it ceases to be of interest to the wealthy parasites who currently prosper from the vile business. Unfortunately, those who profit the most from the illegal drugs trade, are the same financial elite who profit from all the other immoral industries. These same people also have tremendous influence over governments and lawmakers.
Ultimately, those at the top of the illegal heroin trade, have too much to lose from making it available on prescription. It’s a similar situation to alcohol prohibition in the U.S.A. in the 1920s. The gangsters make a fortune, and the criminals for whom the gangsters work, are the people who make the laws. They just get the ‘lower orders’ to do all the dirty work for them.
For example, they currently have squaddies guarding their poppy crops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The invasion of those countries wasn’t only about securing the oil supply, avenging 911, expanding Greater Israel, threatening Russia, training terrorists, creating a climate of instability and insecurity thus increasing arms sales, shoring up the petrodollar, and prosecuting an insane Holy war.
Nothing new under the sun
A similar thing happened with America in the Korean and Vietnam wars. These wars allowed the U.S.A. access to a rich source of the drug – the golden triangle – which produced most of the world’s opium in the 1950s and 60s. The C.I.A. imported the heroin to the States in bulk, via Air America, to fund their ‘black ops’ in other parts of the world. The Hells Angels – largely made up of war veterans – were integrated by the C.I.A. as a supply chain for this illegally imported drug.
flickr.com
There is evidence that all the above happened, but what is
