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elementalhero) wrote2010-07-21 02:04 am
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in b4 "lol your catholic schoolgirl is showing"
So I was on today's RP!S, and there was a secret about someone doing coke. It could have been true, or a troll secret, or whatever. But I found myself really disturbed by several replies. A lot of people replied condemning drug use, which is what I would have replied with if I weren't too chickenshit to reply to anything in rp!s (lol). But then a lot of people replied to those people to tell them to "stop being so judgmental" and that they were naive and stupid for saying "omg drugs are bad" because apparently, thinking that abuse of dangerous, illegal drugs like cocaine makes one a naive, stupid person.
I came away from that page disturbed and angered, mostly by a lot of people's cavalier attitude. I mean, I didn't reply after I read the secret because I was too busy rolling my eyes and thinking what idiots some people are, but it disturbed me that a lot of people seemed to condone illegal drug use because "it's a life decision" and something about "human experience" or whatever and just. no.
Drugs are bad. They aren't funny. They ruin lives. Not just the health of the people taking them, for whatever reasons, but the people involved in the actual drug selling process. People in Third World countries die every day for every gram of coke/heroin/whatever that rich suburban college kids buy and snort/smoke/inject for shits and giggles.
It's one thing to be on drugs and be out on the streets, with no other option, or in a dangerous business where that kind of thing is done. Honestly? I feel terribly over every memoir I read of people who made it out of the inner city and battled addictions to all kinds of substances, people who were depressed or felt they had no option. But affluent people doing drugs recreationally? For fun? Illegal, damaging, addictive drugs? That people die for? Even pot, which seems so harmless - pot, which funds the black market in all kinds of ways, the black market that also specializes in prostitution, human trafficking, other drugs, general life-ruining? Those people? I have no fucking sympathy for them. And to see people laugh something like that off and cast aspersions on people who try to speak up about the, you know, illegality of such actions? Fuck them.
I am probably betraying my inner sheltered white girl, and if so, please, speak up and tell me where I have spoken wrongly or insensitively.
I came away from that page disturbed and angered, mostly by a lot of people's cavalier attitude. I mean, I didn't reply after I read the secret because I was too busy rolling my eyes and thinking what idiots some people are, but it disturbed me that a lot of people seemed to condone illegal drug use because "it's a life decision" and something about "human experience" or whatever and just. no.
Drugs are bad. They aren't funny. They ruin lives. Not just the health of the people taking them, for whatever reasons, but the people involved in the actual drug selling process. People in Third World countries die every day for every gram of coke/heroin/whatever that rich suburban college kids buy and snort/smoke/inject for shits and giggles.
It's one thing to be on drugs and be out on the streets, with no other option, or in a dangerous business where that kind of thing is done. Honestly? I feel terribly over every memoir I read of people who made it out of the inner city and battled addictions to all kinds of substances, people who were depressed or felt they had no option. But affluent people doing drugs recreationally? For fun? Illegal, damaging, addictive drugs? That people die for? Even pot, which seems so harmless - pot, which funds the black market in all kinds of ways, the black market that also specializes in prostitution, human trafficking, other drugs, general life-ruining? Those people? I have no fucking sympathy for them. And to see people laugh something like that off and cast aspersions on people who try to speak up about the, you know, illegality of such actions? Fuck them.
I am probably betraying my inner sheltered white girl, and if so, please, speak up and tell me where I have spoken wrongly or insensitively.
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Some people get dealt a bad hand and get in over their head before they realize what's going on, but those who glamorize drugs, or profit from their distribution, or use them when they damn well know what's going on, it makes me a little sick. What about all the families who get hurt, or all the crime committed to going into the sale? I've got to agree with you, and I think those people are being far more naive than you are.
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To be honest I agree that drugs shouldn't be as heavily policed because I feel that people, in general, criminalize addiction rather than the actual people behind the sale--the growers, the makers, the sellers, etc.--and that infuriates me. People who are addicted become so because of a product that has been tampered purposefully so that a person can be addicted, come back, and waste their life to continue to get their fix. Cigarette companies did the same, there is very little difference except both cigarettes and alcohol have been an established market in both this country and other countries for a really long time.
idk what I'm really trying to get at, but I find that the issue isn't completely black or white--I honestly will always see it as gray, except perhaps in certain cases--and the fact that our system of government continues to punish addiction, rather than really going after the poeple who distribute the product. It may be because I live in an inner city area--yeah, I'm a white girl but I live not too far from Jersey City; drug crime has gone down but it's not unheard of--but it looks that way to me. I may be wrong, cops may take steps against both addicts and the people behind the product, but often than not there seems to be a worse treatment for people who find themselves addicted. If you're an addict you are considered below human.
klajjdkl;jf;a I BASICALLY FORGOT MY POINT AND I THINK I NEED TO SLEEP.
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lmfao upon rereading my original comment i feel like a huge dick ;;;
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The war on drugs is a huge problem. I don't happen to find it as black and white as you seem to. In my opinion, criminalizing the drug trade only drove it under ground and gave the money and power to the wrong people, much like Prohibition did alcohol. And all of the temperance movement would have said the same of alcohol as you have about drugs. Please consider that.
In the end Prohibition did very little to stop the abuse of alcohol and it certainly didn't curb its availability to the public - in fact it made it more available to some people, such as women, with the advent of speakeasies. My point is, criminalizing a behavior rarely keeps people from doing it. In an already-stressed system of justice, it doesn't necessarily make sense to spend the time and resources it takes to keep putting people in jail over it. A lot of people would argue that much of what you dislike about illegal drugs - the exploitation and violence involved - come not from the nature of the users and suppliers, but from the fact that drugs are illegal, and therefore completely unregulated.
Abusing drugs is definitely bad for you, and the current illegal drug trade bad for society, but I think this 'blase' attitude about it comes from what a lot of people see as hypocrisy concerning the issue. Cigarettes and alcohol are still legal, as are fast foods and video games that are tailor-made to be addictive. All of these things have a potential to ruin lives, yet they are legal. The diamond trade and the oil trade are the cause of a great deal of war and strife, and yet they do not suffer the same demonization (well, the oil trade is getting there...). Not to mention the outright lies included in a lot of anti-drug campaigning, particularly in its early years, which are rather akin to the puritanical mythos surrounding the abstinence only attitude about sexual eduction. Attempting to scare people into not using drugs just meant that the real warnings and dangers about it go further unnoticed, having come from an unreliable authority.
To be honest, I'm not interested in doing drugs and I know people whose lives it's ruined. I would never downplay the seriousness of drug addiction or trafficking, and I would have trouble respecting someone who did coke simply because of the high level of danger and its very addictive qualities - I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable enough around them to want to RP. I don't think that drugs are totally harmless, socially or chemically, but I also don't feel like it's as simple as 'they are bad and no one should do them ever', and I doubt I'm the only one. However, people tend to get pushed to one extreme or the other in these types of debates.
The Netherlands made pot legal and it hasn't exploded. At least not yet. I think they're onto something, honestly, but it's a much smaller, more liberal country than ours.
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To address your first point, I definitely didn't mean for it to come off that way, and looking up, I definitely used too many aggressive italics. Joking about drugs in general is not what bothered me - I've certainly made many drug-related jokes in my lifetime and I'll probably make more in the future.
The secret itself went something like, "I'm so dedicated to my game that I once accepted an app while coming off a coke high." Aside from the usual slew of "lol cool story bro"'s and cries of "troll in the dungeon," some commented saying things like, "I think your priorities are a bit screwed up," or, "I don't think that's necessarily an example of good dedication." Then, several anons commented to those comments, saying things like, "don't be so sheltered, people use drugs in the real world, shocking but true," and "how dare you judge the OP," and generally berating several commenters that spoke up against drug use.
What bothered me were the comments that belittled and berated people for speaking up against drugs, especially in the contemptuous way many of them were delivered. (Of course, there were also anti-drug commenters who were jerkasses, I am not trying to make this issue black and white.)
There is certainly dialogue to be had about the criminalization of the drug trade, the societal implications, the morality involved, the legal drugs that are just as bad as the illegal ones, but basically, what I was trying to get at with this entry was that I felt disturbed that so many people felt that someone using cocaine - a stereotypically "rich white person drug," as I discussed with
Again, thanks for giving me such a well-thought-out reply, and I feel more enlightened on this issue now that I've gotten to see some counterarguments not delivered by sarcastic anons with stupid GIFs.
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Those comments kind of reinforced the reason I always have been, and always will be, wary of people who advocate for more lenient drug policies. Do I agree with some of their principals? Absolutely. (Marijuana being a Schedule 1 narcotic is the stupidest fucking thing, the way we prosecute drug cases punishes the victims more often than not, etc.) But--and I do realize that this is most likely due to over exposure to people who are the bad face of this movement, but--everyone I've ever met who gets really up in arms about how strict drug policies are end up engaging in this self-serving, masturbatory dialogue about how drugs are made out to be SO MUCH WORSE than they are, how dare you harsh my high.
Particularly with cocaine. Well, again this is probably personal experience because it's largely a rich white person drug and I grew up in a rich area, where people whined about how cocaine being illegal was UNFAIR in the same way that they whined about the fact that their daddy bought them a Mercedes for their 16th birthday, instead of the BMW they wanted. The entitlement these people feel really, really bothers me.
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