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BS: Role Model Drug users
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 09 Mar 08 - 06:02 AM Megan, drug-abusers, their families and friends are victims too. Everyone who is personally touched by drug-misuse, including alcohol et al, is a victim. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: alanabit Date: 09 Mar 08 - 04:32 AM The first paragraph of Barry Finn's post makes more sense than most of what I read about drugs. At the lowest end of the drugs pyramid, users become sellers to survive. They also are at risk of becoming thieves, violent robbers (if they have the strength), couriers or prostitutes. The drug laws drive up the price of the product. This is very convenient for the criminal and very hard for the user. It can hardly be stated strongly enough that making the price high does not reduce addiction. It simply protects the profit margins of the drug barons. In fact, pop star drug addicts are no better or worse than street addicts. They just have enough money to make survival easier. They can afford something, which is too expensive for most people to fund with a normal lifestyle. When we hear calls for retribution against drug using pop stars, we are really just hearing resentment that they do not suffer as much as those at the bottom of the pile. We can not impose our "moral" values on potential drug takers. This approach has failed for years, just as it has with gambling, prostitution, alcohol, smoking, boxing or just about any other socially undesirable form of behaviour. However, we do have the option of allowing market forces to bring down the prices and devastate the profits of the drug barons. When there is no profit to be made from encouraging drug abuse, who do you think will supply drugs to kids? It's hardly the pop star's fault that expensive illegal drugs can appear exotic to some people. It was not the pop star who made them expensive. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Megan L Date: 09 Mar 08 - 04:23 AM Any victim support volunteer can tell you how it feels to sit beside some pensioner who has been mugged beaten up and put in fear of their life by someone who wanted money to feed THEIR habit. They can also tell you of the anguish felt by families who can't understand why the person they loved is now lying in the morgue because some thoughtless pig felt they could drive a car while drunk. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 09 Mar 08 - 03:09 AM "Not that many though" You surprise me McG, I wouldn't have imagined that stereotyping was something you go in for! :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Barry Finn Date: 08 Mar 08 - 01:08 PM As for dealers, there are 2 kinds, the ones that sell to support there own use & those that sell purely for profit. As to the 1st they should be treated with the viewpoint of rehab, the 2nd should be treated as a career criminal, & should get the punishment due them. It's a crap shoot as to what make one kid who smokes pot go on to harder things & another to go no further or quite altogether. Loving familys, education, need to self medicate, there are any number of individual reasons that someone decides to take the path of drug use. But the best deterrant is drug education, which is sadley lacking. There was a war on drugs that was fought yrs ago, we lost & we gave up. There hasn't been a real war on drugs for many yrs & it doesn't look like there's one on the horizion. Just laws that deal with only the symptoms & none of the causes or preventions. Methadone programs are for control of the addicts behavior only & jail time is the other option, neither helps the situation they only hide it for the present. There's no desire to fund for programs, education or treatment so the problem will continue to exist & the lives of all those afficted will sadley go on. As for clebs, they should be treated just like any other poor sap that got caught walking down the same road, except that they should pay more to help fund the aid for those that can't afford help. They should also serve the same time as the poor street junkie & they more than any others should be forced to do community work with drug dependant youth. They should be made to make use of their status for the betterment of others & be forced to do it for a long time. While on the subject of time, 30 days does not qualitify as treatment. Treatment is an "in-house" program with all the trimmings & lasts for anywher from a year to a year & 1/2 before "out-house" (sorry about the pun) begins. This "I'm clean" doesn't hold water until they can say that after at least 5-10 yrs & even then they still need to walk lighty for another 5-10 yrs. It's not an easy road & most will never walk it for that long, not without a complete shift in the social. Which starts with the home, the community, the schools, the government, law enforcement, the medical community & funding. I've only seen, & I can count them on 1 hand & have a few fingers left over, a few that made a complete recovery, without treatment (where they can say to themself I'm not an ex-addict any longer, just like everyone else). But they have a daily struggle, just like alcholics, for the rest of their lives. The amount of recovered addicts from treatment programs that I've seen probably/might (on a very good day) triple this which when one knows or has known in my case a good 1000 or so junkies & they IMHO fair far better because they don't have to fight daily for the rest of there lives, they cn because of treatment get past that. The odds would be far greater if we had a true war on drugs but we don't & that's the heartbreak for every affected family, that it doesn't have to be this way. To me it's a waste of so many good lives that the cost is nothing compared to the benifits that proper funding would bring. Barry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 08 Mar 08 - 01:07 PM Not that many though (leaving aside whether that is a fair description). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 08 Mar 08 - 12:56 PM "I would be suspicious that anyone who was there in the 60s and claimed never to have used marijuana was being unduly evasive." I never did. Nor any other illegal substances. Never. Absolutely never. Absolute truth. No Evasion. OK? We weren't all sheep, some of us were capable of individual thought, even in the '60s. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 08 Mar 08 - 12:43 PM I've never heard any evidence that suggests that Alcohol and tobacco are not jointly 'the No. 1 route of entry to use of "hard" drugs'. Alcohol is generally the first mind-altering drug people in our societies come up against, and tobacco is generally the first smoking experience. Cannabis can be a next step, but equally well it can be glue, or ecstasy or whatever is available. (And some people start there.) And for many people who drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes of course they never take that next step - and the same is true for cannabis. (Which doesn't of course mean that for some who stick with any of these three drugs the results may not be disastrous.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Richard Bridge Date: 08 Mar 08 - 10:20 AM I am surprised by that. I know and knew a huge number of people who have smoked marijuana, to the extent that I would be suspicious that anyone who was there in the 60s and claimed never to have used marijuana was being unduly evasive. There might be some, but there were not many. Quite a lot used speed, acid, methedrine and ephedrine (sp?) and various uppers and downers. Statistically the number who suffered from addiction was insignificant. If the situation has changed today (and I think it might have done, I think I see more young people who appear to find non-use difficult) then something has changed. It is not, surely, that drugs are more glorified - flip through any 20 sixties songs and about half will be about drugs - nor even I think that recreational drugs are more done. I think it likely that if you go raving today the majority of those present will be using or will have used E, but in the 60s if you went to any mod event the vast majority would have been up on pills. Neither the majority of users in the 60s nor the majority of users now descend into addiction. Some modern drugs are more addictive (eg crystal meth, and crack cocaine, but I do not speak from knowledge or personal trial). Nicotine use is down. I don't think I'd even go along with the idea that alcohol use is much up. A few loonies and a lot of social drinkers is what I see - apart of course from folk festivals where the highly addictive real ale is consumed in vast quantities. I've seen and smelt quite a lot of puff at modern folk events, but I don't see many apparently harmed or addicted. But the inner city seems to be a different place. I don't remember the inner city being so dangerous then. Parts of Nottingham's lace market were pretty iffy - but now parts of Nottingham are VERY edgy. You needed to be careful (slightly later) of the GLC (the Greater London Casuals) but now there are parts of London that are worrying. Is it really true that all modern youth are more at risk - or is the risk concentrated into some groups and some locations? I suspect the latter and that it is too easy to create misleading generalisations. I have of course seen the stats that indicate that the levels of THC in modern cannabis are much higher, but I can only think of one or two people I know who cannot face the world without a spliff. I know manymore whose funciton is impaired by alcohol or health is impaired by tobacco. Any personal tragedy is one too many, and I have seen a couple - I remember an old friend of my late wife's using our house in the 80s as a refuge in one of her (unsuccessful) attempts to quit (I can't remember if it was heroin or cocaine). Curiously she is still alive while my wife is dead - killed by nicotine and Medway Maritime Hospital. I remember one of my secretaries being very broken up when her boyfriend OD'd. But I wonder if the biggest difference is that we are older. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 08 Mar 08 - 08:24 AM Not even going to discuss with you, AH. Pot **may** have been **beneficial** to some people in certain, specific ways, but the downside to its use, and the adverse effect of consumption in an uncontrolled environment (not to mention its position as the No. 1 route of entry to use of "hard" drugs) is well-documented. Period. My final words. It's too painful to go any further. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: GUEST,Ageing Hippie Date: 08 Mar 08 - 04:38 AM I am using a non-constant pseudonym in the hope that it saves the young relative I am about to discuss from identification. As a child he was hopelessly hyperactive. His mother, an occasional drug user since the 60s, who used drugs by choice and not constantly, managed to get him to take some control of his hyperactivity, rather than to use it as an excuse. When he first went to university (reading acoustic engineering) he found it too prescriptive and dropped out. A few years later he went back to read philosophy. He found (he said) that marijuana helped him control the hyperactivity. He got a first. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 08 Mar 08 - 02:44 AM Don't go there Bert, there are, and have been, far too many lives wrecked by this crap - not just users, but their entire families. You may have been there, I don't know, but I suspect not. If you haven't, I doubt you are in a position to judge. Pax J |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Bert Date: 07 Mar 08 - 11:26 PM I see where you are coming from Backwoodsman, but I know of two beautiful babies who would not have been born if their Mum hadn't taken puff or two of pot to help her through the difficult pregnancies. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: GUEST,Chicken Charlie Date: 07 Mar 08 - 11:19 PM One: Anybody who claims to understand the words coming out of Charles Barkley's mouth is stretching the truth. Two: Seriously, one does not stop being a role model just by saying "I'm not one." I remember him saying that line too, but I don't believe he's right. Kids aren't going to stop using him (weren't, that is; I guess he has quieted down) just because he said, "I'm not a role model." How many smokers' parents told them not to start smoking? So whaddya sayda that? Huh? Huh? Huh? B#B#, formerly CC |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 07 Mar 08 - 05:03 AM Yep, me too M. The reason I get so angry at both the "Legalise..(insert your drug of choice)..." and "Hang all druggie scum" brigade (and, I guess, why I initially bristled at your post) is that they seem to forget that each druggie is someone's tragic child, a child who used to be drug-free, and a treasure. Few young people go down the hard-drugs road completely of their own volition - they are influenced and encouraged by highly manipulative people, and frequently ones who are much older and street-wise, who start them on the 'easy' stuff and roll them along into other things. Sadly, the process seems to be happening very publically in the case of Amy Winehouse and her Druggie-Control-Freak Manager/Husband. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: SINSULL Date: 06 Mar 08 - 04:40 PM Thanks Wesley. My family and many friends are fed up and don't want to hear about my son. I am grateful for a place to talk and an ear to listen. I wish I could give up hope but it just isn't happening. This isn't a whining or pity fest. My life is very good and very happy. Hopefully, some day my son's will be too. I can't afford to lose sight of the last 20 years. It is bitterly hard but I have to put my happiness and safety before his. There are goals he has to achieve before I can allow him back into my home. Meantime, he knows that I am only a phone call away. And call he does when life gets too tough for him or he needs cash. I don't give him money ( I know where it goes) and he knows that but he still asks. For anyone in a similar situation - if you don't laugh, you cry. So find the humor in it...even if it is black humor. M |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Wesley S Date: 06 Mar 08 - 03:31 PM If it helps - I have a good friend who's son was a cocaine user and addict. He was living on the streets for a while and they suspect he dabbled in prostitution. But he cleaned up his act and has been clean for over a year now. I know that for a fact. So it can happen. Don't give up hope. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 06 Mar 08 - 02:58 PM Thank you for the kind PM Mary. I've responded. J |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: GUEST,Pro Life Date: 06 Mar 08 - 02:41 PM Stay strong, stay together. It´s a hard one on any family. Still we see it´s acceptable for those on tv to escape the law,the police should act on these creeps in the public eye and set an example, but they don´t, it was like the sick remark Elton said on stage in Brazil regarding young boys. The icons of tv,film and music must be brought down first and show the older generation have teeth. youth culture today sees anyone over 30 as the problem, except for our money of course. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 06 Mar 08 - 02:33 PM Thanks Mary. I've PM'd you all the same. Pax. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: SINSULL Date: 06 Mar 08 - 02:20 PM No apologies necessary. We have been down the same road. Our children owe us an apology. No one else. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 06 Mar 08 - 02:17 PM Apologies Mary, I had no idea. I'll PM you. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: SINSULL Date: 06 Mar 08 - 02:09 PM Wrong, Backwoodsman. Had you read any of my posts over the years you would know that my son was involved in serious drugs by the age of 16 and a dealer by 18. I WOULD NOT MOURN THE LOSS OF HIS FIRST DEALER NOR WOULD i BLAME THE PARENTS OF THE CHILDREN HE HAS DESTROYED WITH DRUGS IF THEY TOOK HIM DOWN. bEFORE i GO ANY FURTHER - i LOVE MY SON. i PRAY EVERY DAY FOR HIS RECOVERY. aND RESIGN MYSELF EVERY NIGHT TO HIS DEATH WHICH WILL BE VIOLENT. dAMN cAPSLOCK! dIDN'T SEE IT THROUGH THE TEARS. mARY |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 06 Mar 08 - 02:00 PM Thanks Ake. It's a difficult one, and there's no easy answer. But whatever, murder is murder, and I find it appalling that someone would suggest it as a remedy. Many drug-abusers (who generally become involved in drugs at a very young age, influenced and encouraged by much older, and very cunning, adults) resort to dealing on some level in order to provide for their own needs AND to avoid severe 'punishment' by those same adults who have taken control of them. I strongly suspect that, if Sinsull and Ebbie made the awful discovery, as I did, that one of their children was involved in drug-use and/or dealing, their attitude and their solution to the problem would be VERY different the the one above. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 06 Mar 08 - 01:35 PM "...staggering onto stage full of drugs." Half the time it's booze anyway. So are these would-be vigilantes on for burning down supermarkets? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Megan L Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:59 PM The question is Sinsull what do we cut of to prove we bagged one? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Peace Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:56 PM It's a sad world when a kid's 'role model' is someone from the entertainment business. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: akenaton Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:52 PM Bravely said Backwoodsman, there is no simple answer to the problems of drug abuse and those who scream "death to the dealers" have no comprehension of drug addiction or dealing with the consequences. In our area there has been a police purge on street dealers. The addicts who can't or won't go on the methadone programme are desperate. Prices have gone through the roof and young girls are prostitutiing themselves to get their fix. Does anyone care ................do they fuck!! When it happens to your own son or daughter......then you'll care.......Ake |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Beer Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:51 PM Hell I was smoking at 9. It was the thing to do because other kids were doing it. Cigarettes that is. Beer (adrien) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Big Al Whittle Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:25 PM I remember when Bert Jansch brought out It Don't Bother Me - there was a packet of gold leaf fags on the the table on the album cover. All of us dumb little folkie kids started smoking gold leaf. i was 15 0r 16 at the time. You can't really legislate for kids being daft. When you're a kid, its part of the job description. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: jacqui.c Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:07 PM The problem is that a lot of these kids don't have parents who are going to watch out for them that way, which is, maybe, why they idolise these celebrities in that way. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Backwoodsman Date: 06 Mar 08 - 12:01 PM "As to dealers - I believe we should have open season on them, from the smallest to the kings. Maybe even a bounty for killing one." My son was what you call a 'dealer'. He occasionally sold stuff to people because:- 1) he'd been ensnared into the drugs scene himself and, at the age of 15, needed money to pay for his own supply - money which he had no other means of obtaining. 2) he was terrified of the guy who gave him the stuff and who insisted with a baseball bat that he go out and sell it. I think that makes him deserving of an element of sympathy snd understanding, not summary execution. And, of course, if your brand of 'justice' had been meted out to him, he would never have had the opportunity to become the reformed character he now is. I understand where you're coming from, Sinsull and Ebbie, but sometimes it's a good idea to engage the brain before making sweeping generalisations. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Ebbie Date: 06 Mar 08 - 11:48 AM I agree, Sins. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: SINSULL Date: 06 Mar 08 - 11:39 AM I agree with Ebbie but I still think they belong in jail for breaking the law - like every kid picked up on the streets or at a party whose parents don't have the money or the lawyers to get them off and into temporary rehab. As to dealers - I believe we should have open season on them, from the smallest to the kings. Maybe even a bounty for killing one. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Ebbie Date: 06 Mar 08 - 11:21 AM I kind of agree with the Barkley thinking. Youngsters may well idolize - and idealize - the celebrities that are pushed on them so relentlessly. I think it is sad and cynical, because it is the entertainment industry that is doing it - and only in order to make money. However. When it becomes known that the celebrity is a user, it is up to the parents of those targeted youngsters to stay current with the situation and to point out the consequences, whether the consequences are swinging-door rehab centers, court appearances, late night talk show ridicule or death itself. IMO |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: pdq Date: 06 Mar 08 - 10:32 AM At one time, basketball player Charles Barkley was making the news for drinking, womanizing and fist fights. When asked if he thought his behavior made him a good role model for his younger fans, Barkley retorted: "I'm not a role model, I'm a basketball player". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Flash Company Date: 06 Mar 08 - 10:12 AM Anyone out there read 'Really the Blues' by Mezz Mezzrow? I did in the late '50s. This is a tome in complete praise of marijuana, but certainly did not have the effect of making me into a user. The thing is, although Mezz is still praising pot right to the last page, he also details the way it led him to opium, and the ordeal of 'cold turkey' to get straight again. No Thanks! Someone said in one of the papers today that anyone who thinks that either Pete Doherty or Amy Winehouse in their present state are 'glamorous' must be using a different dictionary to the rest of us FC |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: jacqui.c Date: 06 Mar 08 - 08:48 AM I think you're right GUEST,Pro Life. Anyone who makes their money targeting an audience of young people should, IMHO, be aware of the responsibility that they have taken on. The reason that they can afford these excesses and the subsequent drying out treatments is mainly because of their young fans. These kids look up to their idols, who are lauded by the media as being next door to God, until they fall flat on their faces. In return for the advantages that that audience base gives they should be setting a good example to that audience. Problem there is that the kids will copy their idols in most things, even to the extent, for some, of drinking and drug taking. 'Amy Winehouse does it - how can it be wrong?' Maybe if they set a better example there might be less of the problems that PMB refers to. I do thing that a stronger deterrent for those who have an influence on the young is in order - if nothing else it might show the kids the consequences of that type of behaviour. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: Beer Date: 06 Mar 08 - 07:07 AM I'll repeat as I have said before in some other thread. There is something wrong with people who go on these T.V. talk shows and air their dirty laundry. Beer (adrien) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: GUEST,Cop-on Date: 06 Mar 08 - 06:36 AM I'm fed up with celebrities appearing on chat shows telling us of their drug habits and how they have reformed. The are praised and applauded and a week later they are in the news again for drug related activites.
-Joe Offer- |
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Subject: RE: BS: Role Model Drug users From: GUEST,PMB Date: 05 Mar 08 - 07:43 AM In the end, it's each individual's prerogative to mess up their lives if that's what they want to do. Some do it with drugs, some with alcohol, some with overeating and some with self- loathing. Far worse than these are the ones who arrogate to themselves the right to mess up other peoples lives- with bullets, fast cars, hate, physical or sexual abuse, abuse of power, bullying and lying. Of course, there is sometimes an overlap between the two. Lets sort out the second lot first, Doherty is rich enough to fund his own tratment. He can pop himself up to cloud level, for all I care - as long as he's chauffeur driven. |
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Subject: BS: Role Model Drug users From: GUEST,Pro Life Date: 05 Mar 08 - 07:21 AM A United Nations report is calling for tougher punishments for drug-using celebrities such as Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse. Not a day goes by you read some story about celebrities caught on film or staggering onto stage full of drugs. Authorities are being too lenient on stars,it sends out the wrong message to teenagers. They get more lenient responses by the judiciary and law enforcemen. There should not be any difference between a celebrity who is breaking the law and non-celebrities. Not only does it give the wrong messages to young people, who are often quite impressionable, but the wider public become cynical about the responses to drug offenders. Authorities should ensure that public celebrities who violate drug laws are made accountable. All I ever read is some judge telling that weed Doherty, next time I will send you to prison, when is next time ? Kate Moss has saw her public profile gain a boast due to her involvement in drugs.
-Joe Offer- |
