08-26-2016, 11:10 PM
(08-26-2016, 07:30 PM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: Heroin turns you in to a criminal. Robbing and stealing to get your fix. It hurts their family especially if they have kids. And it is a danger to everbody who uses roads because they think shooting up and driving around is a good idea.
Many times people go into prison or jail for lesser crimes and come out hardened criminals who have actually learned to be more efficient at committing crimes. Robbing and stealing usually starts with petty stuff. Put the person in prison for stealing $50 and getting loaded on smack and they might realize if they are going to commit a crime it needs to be worth the time. What will that escalate to? They aren't going to lift that small of a cash amount when they get out. They may then be willing to really do some major shit.
The prison systems aren't set up for teaching people to stop being criminals. And they also aren't set up to actually punish people. Really, jail and prison is just an adult version of timeout for people who are not going to learn lessons from timeouts.
Quote:A bunch of heroin addicts repeatedly arrested and allowed to go back on the street is a threat to society.
We are already wasting money pandering to these people. Making sure they have tools to use drugs. Safe places to shoot up. And police officers wasting hundreds of hours babysitting junkies and reviving them if they die.
Second sentence is true and the first sentence is the reason it is true. We keep locking people up and spending the money to keep them imprisoned with absolutely no reform so they come out worse in most cases.
Netherlands legalized drugs and started putting money into rehab instead of imprisonment. Results seem to be less drug related crime and a decrease in debilitating addiction.
But if you insist on a heavy handed approach that is fine since one country did nearly rid themselves of a major drug epidemic in a heavy handed way. The Chinese used to find opium dens then go in and just simply KILL everyone in them. It was effective. But was it civilized? As I alluded to before but didn't directly state the approach of putting fear in people backfires. If a kid keeps hearing heroin, meth or whatever other drug is the lates fad is going to kill them then they see people doing it and living they start to think it isn't as bad and scary as the BS fear tactics made it sound so they figure all the warnings on danger are bogus (and I saw that happen a lot growing up). But hey, the Chinese didn't do the scare tactic of "the drug will kill you". They made the promise that if you use the stuff and get caught "we will kill you".
I already said it but it can't be stated enough. Putting more money into tracking down and imprisoning people for non-violent drug crimes has not helped since the war on drugs initially introduced by Nixon and meant only for drugs in the military and later expanded to all of society just simply doesn't work. It is just a never ending cycle of spending more money.
