Apologies for the delayed response ‘mathanxiety’, I was on holiday with my family this week.
Contrary to your repeated assertions that I’m trying to avoid answering questions (a bit rich in my view if you revisit our history), I’m happy to address them:
“Again, do you think it's ok to break the law? Yes or no will do. You keep on dodging this one.”
Sometimes, yes. As it so happens, I broke the law just three days ago. My family was travelling in a campervan (our 1st time – no hippy clichés…) and due to traffic delays we couldn’t make a scheduled campsite arrival time before it closed, so we ‘wild camped’ - illegal in England but not so in Scotland (we were only just on the wrong side of the border). We had little choice, it was great fun and we left without a trace; but we BROKE THE LAW! Hey ho.
In general terms there are more examples than one could conceivably fit into a single post where it is acceptable to break the law. You think a revolution has never been just? You think that every law ever passed has been in the best interest of the population wherever and whenever it was passed? My faith in your intelligence (I’m genuinely not being facetious here) suggests that you should not require examples, but I would be happy to list some of the more universally accepted ones. I’m assuming, however, that you’re talking specifically about illegal drug use - for example, as admitted by the previous three US presidents (which doesn’t make it right of course, much like the laws they preside over aren’t all right, right? Rhetorical…).
You’ll no doubt understand that many laws are repealed, often because they’re counterproductive. Any example of this is the ‘Rockefeller Drug Laws’ (enacted in 1973), which mandated extremely harsh prison terms for the possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs in New York State. Supposedly intended to target major dealers, most of the people imprisoned under these laws were convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses; many of them with no prior criminal record. The Rockefeller Drug Laws created stark racial disparities and exacted an enormous financial toll, until their repeal in 2009.
Sorry to labour the point about legislation, but you seem to have a thing about it. I just learnt that one in every 31 adults in the United States is in prison, in jail or on supervised release. The United States represents about 5 percent of the world's population, yet it houses around 25 percent of the world's prisoners, making it the highest incarceration rate in the world. And at an average of $23,876 dollars per state prisoner, is that money well spent mathanxiety? With so many of its citizens in prison compared with the rest of the world, there are only two possibilities: either the US is home to the most ‘wrong’ people on earth, or it is doing something vastly counterproductive. Which would you suggest, mathanxiety?
Back my own situation, and before my comments are taken out of context again:
- I rarely take illegal drugs
- I do not condone or encourage the use of any drugs, whether legal or illegal;
- I wouldn’t expose my children (either as minors or adults) to, or encourage them to enter an environment where the partaking of illegal substances is overtly acceptable.
But your blind faith in/respect for the law per se is misguided, in my view.
Anyway,
“You have a strong disdain for the statistics you provided (I'm perfectly happy with them btw and I haven't been moaning about them for several conversations)”
Wow, that’s a sudden, indirect and somewhat baffling U-turn. This comes following your previous, consistent stance that my stats weren’t worth a jot and now you suggest that I am discounting them; the only meaningful figures anybody has bothered to provide? What’s changed? That you now realise I genuinely had no bias? Please enlighten me (that’s a direct question by the way).
Then…
“…perhaps stemming from your misapprehension of how to apply them in calculating risk, so it seems to me you are not in any position to define 'reasonable experimentation'. You seem to think your belief in your own invincibility and past record ('I'm very much still here') are proof positive that nothing bad is ever going to happen to you as a consequence of breaking the law and taking serious medical risks.”
That’s just too mealy-mouthed for me to pass meaningful comment on (I’ve really tried).
I previously set out a (fairly high level) counter-argument for the regulation of illegal drugs, which you seemed to have barely failed to acknowledge let alone attempt to counter, i.e.:
Regardless of my own opinion, devising a sensible drug policy that reduces the harm drugs cause while recognising that a lot of people will take drugs no matter what, is becoming an increasingly pragmatic route for governments in the face of increasing economic challenges.
You ask me,
“How is breaking the law and using a class A mystery substance 'experimenting within reasonable bounds'?We are back to your opinion of breaking the law here. The idea that class A narcotic use is in any way reasonable indicates to me that you do not respect the law.”
Perhaps you and your peers enjoy the odd glass of wine, whereas on the balance of probabilities someone else in your peer group is an alcoholic. By ‘reasonable bounds’, I mean I make a choice to break a law (existing but for how long…) every now and again (in terms of years in my case), all the while conscious of the relative risks to my children becoming ‘fatherless’. And this is where I get cross – all this uninformed, disproportionate, broadly unsubstantiated, emotionally-led drum-beating around ‘mystery substances’ and ‘you take the same risk every time’, etc. etc.
According to Drugscope (a UK charity which is ‘the primary source of independent information on drugs and drug related issues’),
“While impurities and dilutents can, in themselves, be dangerous to consume the likelihood of this happening has often been exaggerated. While rumours circulate about drugs cut with rat poison, strychnine and brick dust such contamination is very rare. It is not in the dealer’s interest to have customers dropping dead from deliberately contaminated drugs. In contrast people will return to get drugs from dealers who offer good quality substances.”
Now again, please realise that I’m not providing this quote to justify anything; just in the hope of providing a little balance. And on the rare occasions that I do partake it’s never procured from a random individual down a dark alley, and is previously tested for impurities and adulterants (again, this is in mutual best interests - call me an early blueprint for regulation).
As an aside, nightclubs in the UK increasingly provide facilities for their punters to test the composition of controlled substances they have procured. For example, Manchester's ‘Warehouse’ launched testing scheme supported by a wider partnership that includes the police, the council, drug charity The Loop, and Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS trust. It has faced little public opposition. Would YOU oppose it, mathanxiety?
“How are risking your life and breaking the law (and risking leaving your children fatherless) evidence that you have been brought up well?”
A good upbringing is clearly subjective, isn’t it? I know people who were brought up well and who have made poor individual choices, as well as others who were raised ‘badly’ and who have come good. Personally speaking, my idea of subjecting my children to (and by your own admission) pretty relentless study-based activities throughout their formative years is unbalanced, but each to their own.
And thanks for the definition of ‘peer pressure’, I get it but I tend to make my own choices, e.g. I’m probably in the vast minority of UK early middle-aged males (yep, I am male for what it matters) that has never supported a football (soccer) team.
Tea parties can be cool (where did I use the word ‘uncool’ other than referring to myself?) but my little pun was in relation to the Tea Party Movement and your own apparent staunch conservatism, not the ‘uncoolness’ of actual tea parties.
“'I know I am on a hiding to nothing when it comes to my arguments in favour of continuing to use cocaine and ecstasy despite being the father of two young children so I will tell someone who is challenging me that she has sort of problem/is deeply uncool'. (It is 'she' btw).”
Pot calling the straw man…
“I have enough of a picture of who you are, thanks.”
You choose to misinterpret and warp what I’m saying to suit your agenda; ‘twill ever be thus.
“Let's hope this 16 year old girl's death was not a senseless and completely avoidable one related to ecstasy.”
Let’s hope so too, but a day after your quoted article (so 18 Aug) the schoolgirl's aunt “urged people not to jump to conclusions and claimed she could have died from a hereditary heart condition”.
Her aunt wrote: “I’m her aunt, and she passed away nothing has been proven yet we have a heart condition in the family so if u can’t send ur condolences then keep ur comment to yourself.”
Seems quite balanced in my view, and a thankfully rare occurrence either way but a tragedy nonetheless.
“It's hard to nail down exactly what constitutes 'success' for children but I will try: I have always encouraged the DCs to do their best in all areas of their lives, not to shortchange themselves, to always put their own individual best interests in the long term first even if this means sacrificing in the short term -- so never to dumb themselves down (four of them are girls and this advice comes into parenting girls because of pressure to conform to gender stereotypes that include sucking at maths and science and not taking harder classes in humanities and social sciences, but it applies to DS too) and to take responsibility first and foremost for their own health including sexual health. This often means asking girls to resist peer pressure, insist on a condom every time they have sex, and live with the consequences of being called the sort of names girls get called when they assert themselves and insist on conditions in a sexual situation, or reveal to a prospective partner that they carry a condom with them when he says he can't use one because he doesn't have one... It means for DS knowing that a condom is expected every time for him too. Two of the DCs have asthma and taking responsibility for their own inhaler use, managing their allergies and avoiding triggers of asthma have been taught. Above all I see them respecting themselves and others, which is the basic premise of all the advice I have given them. If they follow my advice I have every reason to believe they are going to be happy and healthy, which to me constitutes success. Everything else is gravy. Not that I disparage 'gravy' and the sort of enjoyable lifestyle it can buy, but self respect comes first and I don't think you can be truly happy without it.”
I can’t argue with any of that, but who would?
The trouble is, mathaxiety, that there will always be people like you who assume that because something was prohibited over the course of the 20th century, the fact of the prohibition is itself justification for it to continue to be prohibited. But what is the point of it? Exactly what is prohibition meant to achieve? We all know (including you) what happened when alcohol was prohibited in the States: smuggling, ‘speak-easies’ and the creation of an organised crime network to manufacture and distribute increasingly lethal concoctions, with all the associated violence one would expect.
The justification for drugs prohibition changes every time it is questioned - which leads to the suspicion that the "reasons" are not so much justifications as rationalisations. And the reason these rationalisations keep changing is because if they can be pinned down to specifics, then the question can be asked "but has prohibition actually worked?"
The primary difference between us is a). your own unerring support for the established consensus regardless of whether it is actually right or wrong, and b). your unerring belief that your children have lived in some kind of utopian moral bubble as a direct result of your parenting. Assuming they have, then lucky you and them, but for you to suggest that such a parenting framework can be applied with equal success is simply patronising to those parents out there that are having to pragmatically deal with life’s everyday realities AFTER the event.
Of course (and whether you believe it or not- I sincerely doubt it) like your own, my number one priority is the safekeeping of my family, both now and in the future. But nothing you have said has caused me to feel that I have taken disproportionately uncalculated decisions based on my own circumstances. My own situation is being generalised, snowballed and pigeon-holed to (mis)represent the story the majority on here wish to purport. I don’t wish to denigrate the perspective of those who have negative experiences with illegal substances and for the umpteenth time,
I’m not supporting their use. But I accept that they are used, and always will be, and stating either the bleedin’ obvious or (more often than not) downright misinformation gets us nowhere.
No doubt I will get slated again, based on emotionally-led arguments rather than rational thinking, but do you know what? I think it’s important that someone is willing to provide a balanced counter-perspective to some of the deconstructive moral arm-flailing going on here.