<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>I agree punishment is the worst form of behaviour control for drug users, for all the reasons you said and more.</div><div>IF punishment is going to be used then there should also be forced rehab style treatments. </div><div>However nothing will work unless the person actually wants to stop using drugs altogether. And convincing someone that drug use is ruining their lives is one of the hardest things to accomplish, especially when most, if not all, drug abusers are in denial.</div><div><br></div><div>Is it Iceland that offers a lot of treatment centres, and as a result has had drug use, and violence associated with drugs declining?</div><div><br></div><div>I'm a recovering addict, and I would simply tell kids my story (also happy to share here if you're interested).</div><div>I knew all the bad and possible lethal side effects of everything I put in my body to the extent of a couple hours of research, and I did it all anyway because of the feeling I would get.</div><div>It was mostly about escapism.</div><div><br></div><div>Now the trend of drugs more powerful than alcohol.. If this trend continues (which is pretty much guaranteed), it really depends on what comes out. Everyone has a preference to what they want to feel.</div><div>People who drink a lot also tend to smoke more weed, and take more Valium/Xanax, etc, than people who like amphetamines (ecstasy, speed, methamphetamine, etc).</div><div>So with the trend continuing and no change in how to deal with it, I would expect crime and weekend violence (particularly in Australia) to increase exponentially.</div><div><br></div><div>I feel the rest of the world should follow Iceland in the management and treatment of drug addiction.</div><div><br></div><div>Your plan of referring people to a treatment centre paid in part instead of punishment is the most desirable idea, but will still only work if the person wants to stop using, or has realised they have a problem and doesn't know what to do.<br><br>Nuala </div><div><br>On Apr 3, 2015, at 22:04, William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com">foozler83@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0)">Today we have many drugs that are far more powerful than alcohol. What happens if this trend continues exponentially? <div><span><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"> John K Clark<br><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>I find this highly worthy of discussion on its own. The more we get to know our biochemistry the easier it will be to design drugs to create desired effects in our brains.<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>As a libertarian I find no favor with trying to ban certain drugs through legislation. Hasn't worked well at all and is extremely expensive. We can try to marginalize them, as we have done with tobacco, punish overuse of, say, alcohol, with fines and such. We can try to educate people to the very real and sometimes lethal effects of certain drugs. Hard to say how effective those are.<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>Not that I have any great and wonderful ideas myself, but as a psychologist and just a casual observer, punishment is just about the worst form of behavior control there is. The side effects of punishment, such as resentment, finding ways of avoiding it, and a lot more, are often worse than the behavior itself. And if it doesn't work all that well at first, people are tempted to increase it. Too much room for abuse.<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>What you create is an approach-avoidance problem. Want to use the substance versus possible punishment if caught. Obviously if the drug is highly desirable it wins every time.<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>We tell kids about the bad aspects, but we don't tell them how great some drugs make us feel. <br><br> Here is my personal philosophy:<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>I turned down LSD and cocaine, done by my best friends. I might like them. I might love them, and I could not afford to love them, either professionally or financially, so I chose not to try them. <br><br>Nicotine, we learned, is instantly addictive - one inhalation and your brain is changed forever. Worst drug we know of by far. Worse than heroin. (Harder to quite than alcohol, for me.)<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>Here is a story I would tell all kids:<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>A very straight and moral guy got all the way through med school and internship without trying any drug of any kind. But he got curious, and so he sampled some of the opioids available to him. He said "This is the way people should feel all the time." </font></span><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>One of the scariest sentences I have read. </font></span>He lost his license asap - ruined his career. <br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>Until you find way to make people not want to feel normal, we will have a drug problem.<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>I would use no punishment at all, just a referral to a treatment program which they pay for in part (Freud said that people won't respect what they get unless they pay for it and I agree). <br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>Many billions spent on trying to stop dealers have only made them rich and use poorer. One way we are poorer is having to support the world's biggest prison population.<br><br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font>bill w<br></font></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><font><br><br></font></span></div><div><br></div></div></div>
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