"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
The Drunks Who Don't Want to Be Cured
"Will some future observer, say 50 years from now, look back on the treatment programmes that so many drunks have to endure and see a clear infringement of their most basic civil liberties?"
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Many, many of us see, RIGHT NOW, that mandatory treatment programs for ANY drug users are an unconscionable violation not only of basic of civil rights but of the basic human right to be left alone. Having succeeded, however, in convincing the public that drug addiction can and should be diagnosed and punished by the nanny state, those same public parasites, aka "servants," are now starting to crack down on dangerously high in fat foods -- and until people begin to see that their right to eat what they want is the same as your right to drink what you want and my right to smoke what I want, the parasites, I'm afraid, will keep gnawing away until we're all in prison and there's no one left to pay their salaries.
If all these drunks are so concerned with their dignity and all they should stop panhandling me for money, quit loitering on the street outside my business, stop sleeping in the park, and vomiting and pissing all over the place. If all they did was fend for themselves during the day and then booze in the own homes at night who would care? The private market has no "cure" for the boozers and dopers so we have to have a state entity. Tell me why I'm wrong?
@ Ken -- Let me be the first to tell you -- You're wrong. The function of the "state entity" should be to protect the public from those who would PHYSICAL harm. Laws that demonize the users of certain drugs simply for their choice of drugs protect no one. (You do not have the right to be protected from having your sensibilities offended.) BTW, streets and parks are PUBLIC places. If you don't like the way the PUBLIC acts in PUBLIC, retreat to your PRIVATE place, where you have every right to control other people's behavior.