Enough Fentanyl to Kill a Regiment
Yesterday afternoon, I heard some strange animal-like sounds coming from below my living room window. I pushed back the blinds, only to see several policemen and paramedics tending to something hidden by the hedge separating my building from the neighboring building. As I continued to look, I saw the paramedics hauling a black man in a bloodied t-shirt who was still howling.
Just another day on the streets of L.A., watching as our civilization is being eclipsed. And not just for a few minutes, either, but for the long count.
I do not understand why anyone would think that recreational drugs would be an improvement on real life. Even when real life is grim, it beats madness and suicide by chemical.
What is the tipping point after which there are so many people on drugs that reality has been supplanted? For a possible picture, read Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem’s The Futurological Congress.
Tarnmoor 
The fact is that many many people have derived great pleasure from recreational drugs and even reported tremendous improvements in their lives as a result. To deny this reality is to put your head in the sand and will not help the issue.
Clearly, if there is a balance to be achieved in this regard then way too many people have got the balance wrong – but that is true of both sides of the argument.
The streets of my city are littered with broken men and women on drugs who are nowhere near any tremendous improvement in their lives. Like the guy who was hauled away bleeding from the yard next door that I wrote about in my blog. Or the guy in downtown LA who punched me because I didn’t have any “spare change” to give him.
Maybe recreational drugs help some people, but certainly not the homeless.
I am not advocating, necessarily, the use of recreational drugs. But if we are to properly deal with the issue we need to acknowledge that people do take them for quite understandable reasons. These people aren’t monsters. A very large proportion of drug users do so with minimal or no detrimental effects.
In terms of the homeless? No, the results are often tragic. But drug use is not the primary issue in that instance. Homelessness is.
I am not sure that I agree with you. If you were to create a Venn Diagram indicating homelessness, drugs, booze, and mental illness, you would find a substantial overlap. Sometimes, I think most of the men (in particular) who are homeless are so partly because of problems with alcohol, drugs, and mental illness.
You are right. Such a diagram would certainly indicate substantial overlaps – so we end up with a chicken and egg sort of dilemma.
And perhaps I am making my point very poorly. So let me put it a different way ….
I think history would suggest that demonising illicit drug use has proved to be a very ineffective means of addressing the concerns that you quite justifiably express. There is absolutely no question that such chemicals have done enormous social and physical harm. But it is also true that people have experienced joy and satisfaction from them, much as they have from alcohol, gambling, Big Macs and motor vehicles. Prescription medicine is another obvious example.
So, like all these things, we need to acknowledge the positives as well as the negatives to gain any sort of credibility in encouraging responsibility.
Believe it or not – drugs give people hope and temporary access to another world. That such may be an illusion is hardly relevant. Those who find themselves in a hopeless (homeless) position will always reach out for any sort of hope. As long as recreational drugs (completely illegal and hence unmonitored unregulated and utterly unpredictable) are a more obvious form of hope than safer, wiser alternatives then we, as a society, need to accept responsibility. Prohibition fuelled by lack of empathy has always proved to be a counterproductive response.
‘I think most of the men (in particular) who are homeless are so partly because of problems with alcohol, drugs, and mental illness.’
So it’s odd, don’t you think, that the standard response to mental illness is, actually, more drugs …
I see no joy on the streets. Perhaps stockbrokers who do cocaine (though I do not move in those circles) get some joy — but with the increased danger that one’s favorite drug could be laced with a fatal amount of fentanyl makes that dangerous.
How much can you trust your supplier? I wouldn’t — not one bit.
That is very true. Heroine, for example, is not all that bad for you, but the stuff it is cut with can be deadly. Hence if such things were legalised and controlled we might alleviate some of the problems.
Possibly, but we are far from allowing that.