People who take drugs usually don’t do well in life. Most of them come from a long line of people on the left side of the bell curve. More damaging, most of them come from broken homes. They have lost the desire to care about their own futures, so they don’t.
Hopeless people in inner cities, suburbs, small towns, and rural areas are all inclined to take drugs. They are not so much “bad” or “weak” as they are without jobs and hope. Drug use is merely a measure of hopelessness. Drug users are not helped by self-righteous pomposities who sneer: “Why don’t they just get jobs?”
Many on the left side of the bell curve can’t get jobs because there are no jobs for them. Automation in agriculture, manufacturing, and the home have made those of limited abilities too expensive to hire.
Drugs are about the only thing they can find that makes their hopeless lives more bearable. It is wrong to put bell curve left-siders in jail simply for hiding from their own helplessness and hopelessness. We must not treat them as the English did the Irish, who realized: “They hate us, just for bein’ what we are.”
Drug-takers hate to see how sad and futureless their lives are. The most desperate commit crimes to get enough to buy the drugs to hide their hopelessness. Then, they are arrested, and “put away”. Their families are further impoverished by the drug user’s jail terms. They, too, are made more hopeless every day, therefore more likely to become addicted to the same escape from hopelessness.
Those who only wanted to avoid the agony of despair are often sent to a brand new jail that’s far, far away. For a long, long time.
The brand new jail was built to “provide jobs” in some outlying county, a hundred miles away. Most rural manufacturing businesses have relocated to countries with cheap labor. Often, the only new jobs for rural workers are in the new prisons. Their rural, far-off location magnifies hopelessness by making family visits impossible.
“Successful drug bust!” blare the news/photo-ops. After each one, the price of drugs on the street goes up. More people are beaten, shot, and robbed. More addicts will be caught and sent to the new jails. Soon, the new jails, too, will be full. Other outlying counties want new jails. “We want to get our fair share.” becomes the cry of others wanting to profit from less fortunate people who try to escape hopelessness.
Drugs are just bits of compounded chemicals. Each dose only cost a few pennies to make. Wouldn’t it be better to just give free drugs to addicts, or sell them for a dime, and let them go home to sleep, or do whatever they do?
It is heartlessly cruel to have the hopeless hounded down, cuffed, and thrown into jails for ever-longer sentences. The bell curve left-siders’ poor minds become ever dimmer. They aren’t smart enough to avoid the vastly more intelligent police from the center and right side of the bell curve. “Fighting crime”, when it comes to drug users, is really just shooting fish in a barrel.
Drugs are not as bad for society as is the increasing hard-heartedness and self-righteousness of those who enjoy profiting from the misery of pitiful addicts. It is better to love our neighbor than to destroy him. His only “crime” is to self-medicate with the only thing he can find that helps him get through the long days with hopelessness the only thing in sight.
