IF I RULED THE WORLD

I don't delude myself that ruling the world would be easy and I do appreciate that there would be many set backs in trying to get things sorted. After all, as the great man said, you can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can't please all of the people all of the time. Having said that there are some things that I would like to see tackled.

A "for instance" is that I would propose a radical re-think about how to handle addicts. I know that I bang on about this constantly, but why don't we go back to the way they treated addicts 50 years ago. Register them and give them the drugs. Take it out of the hands of criminal suppliers.

One of the objections to this is, it is claimed, addiction would spiral out of control. But surely it's out of control anyway. Young children are being targetted by criminal suppliers, addicts trawl our street looking for the means to fund their addiction filling honest citizens with the fear of being robbed, mugged or worse. They take up police and court time and fill our jails at a huge cost to the economy. How much worse can it get? Logic tells me that money saved by taking the problem out of the Criminal Justice System could be better spent in providing a solution.

Wana know another solution? Here's is a great one I heard today. Frederick Forsyth has just written a new book on the subject, The Cobra. He was being interviewed about it on TV today and he said that one of the the answers is to re-catagorise the importation of drugs from being a crime to being the act of terrorism that it is. Now that is an interesting one because it opens up a whole new method of dealing with the dirty scum at the top.

And finally -

Today is National 'HOLY CRAP, YOU'RE HOT' Day! Send this to someone gorgeous, but don't send it back to me – I've been getting this message all day!!!

ANOTHER PERFECT WEDDING

I have been swallowed up in a blogger’ vortex. with so much to say but no words to tell the story. But let me start with the feel good stuff.

Last weekend OG and I went to the really posh wedding of one of our colleagues. The ceremony was at the very grand Stapleford Park Hotel. OG and I stayed the weekend and were very priviledge to be upgraded. If look on their website http://www.staplefordpark.com/ the room we stayed in was the one to the left of the flag, the one with the open window.

It was a massive room, as high as it was wide, in fact cube shaped. Although OG was not particularly impressed with it and kept banging on that it couldn’t possibly be an upgrade. I explained that this was “faded grandeur”. He thought it was tat. I must agree that I did have the occasional thought, “I’ve got better than this at home, what am I doing here?"

I digress, the wedding. The weather was perfect, the happy couple were beaming, the bride was beautiful, the setting was stunning, the company was entertaining, and the food was to die for.














So that’s the good stuff. Now for the vortex stuff. There is a saying “don’t listen to the words, hear the meaning”. So here goes - this is when I reveal my true craziness. I applaud the new initiative to treat heroin addicts with heroin. Yes, I know, mad isn’t it. But this is my thinking.

A high proportion of prisoners are “in residence” because of crimes committed to feed a drug habit. The cost of policing and incarcerating junkies is massive and doesn’t even begin to solve the problem, not to mention the cost in human misery to the addict, their family and us good citizens going about our everyday business. The result is that the Criminal Justice System is in virtual meltdown.

Added to that is the wider issue of drugs funding the terrorism that our soldiers are dying to protect us from and the evidence for just buying the damn opium direct from source and giving them the wretch “fix” at clinics is compelling. Work smart, not hard - cut out the criminal/terrorist middlemen.

By giving junkies their drug in clinics we make our streets safer and take the criminals operating the supply chain out of the equation. It is a solution that works well and saves money in Sweden and Switzerland

I should also add that I don’t believe that anyone sets out to be an addict. The term "addiction" is used to describe an obsession, compulsion, or excessive psychological dependence and takes many forms such as drug addiction, alcoholism, compulsive overeating, problem gambling etc. I know many people with alcohol and/or heroin addiction, both in recovery and still suffering so I do have some personal knowledge of the difficulties that surround this hellish condition.

Last year I met a wonderful group of brave, honest, hard working souls, all with personal experience of addiction either themselves or within their family. They believe that wherever possible the addict should abstain from drugs, which is obviously the best solution, but this is only the beginning of the recovery journey. They set up a drop in center. Their work has been an extraordinary success story, helping addicts get clean and back into society by opening up channels for them to get back into work and housing. Unfortunately, because they don’t have “qualifications” they can’t get funding. They struggle.

The “qualifications” that they DO have is that they know all the angles, they can’t have the wool pulled over their eyes and they work with conviction, passion and love. The “been there, done that, got the T-shirt” sort of people. But this, apparently, doesn’t count. We desperately need to look at this whole problem with fresh eyes.

So - hurrah for this initiative. Now let’s sit back and watch the bleeding liberals and mad politicians wreck the scheme!

And finally … I believe that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help

LET'S STOP THE MADNESS NOW

The news this morning brings another horror stabbing story. What are we going to do? Most victims and perpetrators are young men; most stabbings are drug or alcohol related. I think that we need to turn this problem on its head by concentrating solely on how to keep our streets safe and then how to educate and intervene with the addiction problems. Lets first identify and tackle the real threats instead of (mataphorically speaking) throwing the whole problem at the wall hoping some of the mud will stick. I know that this is all very complex but I believe that it has to be addressed.

So, what doesn’t work? Stop and search is a complete waste of police resources and does nothing to keep our streets safe. Knives are freely available. They simply go and get another one.

Filling our prisons with “criminals”? who have committed petty crimes to feed their drug habit or whilst under the influence of alcohol doesn’t work either. They hit the streets again and the merry-go-round continues. But worse than that, they take up precious prison space that should be used for the real threats to society. The Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy states “….prisons are filled with drug "offenders", many with no other crime than simple possession of drugs for personal use. Scarce resources better spent on health, education and economic development are used on ever more expensive supply-reduction efforts. Sensible proposals to reduce drug-related crime, disease and death are abandoned in favour of proposals for "drug-free" societies, inhuman and unattainable though they may be”.

So, what do we do now? It is obviously complex and needs to be attacked on several fronts with joined up writing and there, in my humble opinion, lies the problem. The real experts in the field are not given credence because they don’t have “3rd tier learning”. I’m talking about the addicts and alcoholics who have successfully recovered and are willing to pass on the knowledge.

The Swiss philosopher Jeanne Hersch wrote. “Man has the right to make decisions. Drugs reduce this right of free choice. Drugs are the negation of human rights because they deny that permission to take them comes in the final analysis not from the doctor but from one’s own conscience. Because man can decide in a responsible manner, he has the duty to do so. Because he is capable of making decisions, he must do so. We cannot escape this obligation. This correlation between ability and duty to decide has existed since the day man was first created.”

Recovering addicts and alcoholics know this to be true. They also know how and when to intervene to help others by passing on their own experiences. This is not rocket science.

In the meantime how do we keep our streets safe? In our small market town there are a small percentage of nutters who could be considered dangerous and a menace to society, especially when they have been drinking and are known to the police. The rest of the drongoes are “wannabes”. So let's start with the nutters.

Make prison a harsher punishment and a deterrent to the real threats to society i.e. the small percent of really dangerous individuals, drug dealers and drug barons who, as I have already said, are well known to the police.

Remove drug abuse from the criminal justice system and treat it as a medical problem with registered addicts and, as used to be in the 1960’s, prescribed drugs, the same as someone suffering from Bipolar Disorder gets medication. But, you say, addiction is a self-inflicted condition. Is it though? Addiction is a little more complex than that. Why is it that I can drink without any ill effects, but some people can’t? Does that make me a better person then them? I don't think so. I don’t believe that anyone sets out to be an addict. I have a background knowledge in this because I know many, many people in 12 step programmes, including myself.

Make it more attractive for drug addicts to go to the medical people for clean, free supplies rather than resort to stealing etc. Without the addict stealing to feed the habit we immediately clean up our streets, Class A drugs cease to be a gold mine for criminals, police resources are freed up to be utilised more effectively and prisons would not be full of petty criminals. I know that this is an oversimplification, life is not black and white and there will always be drug related crimes, but I'm talking about improvements here, not total answers.

Currently resourses are being committed to ineffective policing and maintaining government agencies who demand the addict be drug free BEFORE they are able or willing to intervene and will drop the addict when they invariably test positive or miss an appointment. What a waste of money. Addicts need help spontaniously, not by appoitment. Addicts are not compliant individuals and will not respond to a regime. Rather than demand permanent absention from all addicts they should try to make inroads with the few willing and able to abstain immediately directing them to the free self help groups such as AA and NA for continued support. Also educate, keep track of and eventually offer the hand of help to the few that will eventually "get the message". In the meantim let's simply keep society safe.

I know that this is a contentious issue but don't get me wrong, I am NOT saying go easy on addicts. I AM saying let's make it a top priority to make our streets safe again.

And on a more personal note OG started chemo on Thursday and so far, so good. No unduly bad side effects. He has another session next Thursday and then a week off. If he can tolerate it this regime will continue for 12 weeks. Fingers and everything crossed.