| >> However the proportion of drug users who are addicts is small and the proportion of addicts that steal is small so saying that drugs and theft Probably we have different view on who is a drug addict. Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast. >> Again, a tiny proportion of drinkers may cause a problem Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems. More than half domestic murders are caused by alcohol in Russia. Whole villiages die out because if alcohol, you can hear sometimes in some village there's no one who can work, because all men became total drunks. I think magical removing of alcohol would be single most positive thing crime-wise you can do in Russia. But of course it's impossible. >> Switzerland basically killed this stuff and proved that heroin addicts could lead quite a normal life if they knew where the next dose was coming from - a government clinic in this case. Yes, that's what I was talking about - using should be controllable. Special clinics etc. But Switzerland experience can be hard to reproduce elsewhere, this country just has different social structure. So it should be applied carefully. |
Maybe we have. One of the reasons I was hacked off at the first comment on this was that it's not even talking about addicts - "drug use goes hand in hand with theft". This is just not true.
>> Hard drugs addicts (like heroin, ketamin, etc) have very large criminality involvement, because those drugs make them fall very fast.
I've never heard of anyone stealing to support their Ketamine habit either!?! K causes various bladder problems, and while it does seem to be a little addictive isn't really very high up the scale I don't think.
>> Maybe small proportion of drinkers, but huge proportion of _drunk_ people cause problems.
I will defer to your knowledge. I know we have problems with alcohol in the UK but I get the impression Russia is more familiar with this problem! I agree actually, that decreasing use of alcohol in our societies would probably be a really positive thing. And that it would be next to impossible. Perhaps if everyone had access to some cannabis they might not bother so much? (I'm only half-kidding there).
In general I don't think addiction is a good thing, and I don't think anyone should be encouraged to take drugs of any sort, let alone the really nasty ones. I'm very pro-legalisation but that doesn't mean I want to hide the damage drugs do to people and to society.
I just think it's way off-mark to say "all drug users are thieves" !!