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Friday, October 31, 2008

Whose Fault is it Anyway?









Illegal drugs are the world’s problem! The things that have been done under the influence of hard drugs are, in some examples, unspeakable. There was one incidence in which a man took first one, and then the other of a woman’s two children and held them up as though they were chickens, and calmly fatally slit their throats in full view of the mother, and then he turned the knife on her. To make matters worse, she was someone else’s wife, although his lover. I wondered in light of that shocking event whether anyone still thought that taking drugs was a cool thing to do.

The police commissioner of every force in the world will tell you that he is conducting a war against illegal drugs, but that said, it’s about as successful as the war on terrorism. Perhaps it’s really one and the same.

Who is the drug dealer?

Well, he is the villain of the piece. He is the one who pushes drugs and is available with the goods, and he is the one who is roundly despised. The police operations are directed at him, and when a gang is broken up and the goods confiscated, much is made of it in the press. He is also shown as the person who is wealthy, paying in cash for incredibly expensive items when the rest of the world is suffering through a credit crunch. People are losing their jobs and their homes, but not the successful drug dealer.

The image that he puts out is very seductive to young men. The dealer has women, drugs, big homes, Hummers and other high value cars, and he has the respect of a lot of people. When you try to lure a young man away from that siren song into a normal job paying normal wages, he turns his lip up and scoffs at the “chump change” being offered.

The business is a tough one and the rules are strict. Mess up and you pay with your life, and you might also cause your near relatives to lose their lives. It’s a business that takes otherwise nice people and turns them into monsters. You cannot be nice or slack and survive because there’s always someone coming up behind you to take over your turf. You can only survive if you are prepared to show that you are determined, and that usually means putting people in the ground. Don’t have the heart for it, stay away from it!

The facts are that the drug dealer is a businessman, exactly like all others in a fundamental regard. He seeks to identify a market that needs and wants to buy a certain product, and he then sets out to provide the merchandise. His closest peers are the tobacco and alcohol industry. However, those industries are legal, but nonetheless they do promote a like product that alters the mind and body, and not always in a good manner.

My main beef is with the tobacco industry because they deliver a product that has a negative effect on the user, and those around him, when it is used in exactly the way as instructed. It is even worse than guns because although they are destined to kill, they do no harm if only used for target practise on tin cans. But tobacco certainly does nothing to improve one’s health, and the potential favourite user is a young person. It cannot be said that cigarette smoking does kill, but it can, and very often does lead to death. There was a time when cigarettes were given for free to college students. I hope that is no longer done, but I am straying from my point of whose fault is the out of control use of drugs and its consequences.

For some peculiar reason we do not look at the customer’s role in assessing blame. I wonder why that is? Politically it’s a hot potato because drug addicts still vote, (maybe) and such an issue as this would normally be the subject of the politician to address. Well, I’m not running for any office and I’m prepared to say it like it is. Should it ever happen that a drug dealer imports a quantity of drugs and no-one shows up to buy, he won’t do it again and he will find something else to sell, like Mary Kaye products, or Amway.

So, in summary I say that the people at fault for our problems are the users. I sincerely hope that none of those people are in the chorus demanding that the streets be cleaned up and the war be won because they cannot have it both ways.

Copyright © 2008 Eugene Carmichael