In my younger teens I remember watching television obsessively, with an almost religious devotion. The TV was on and I was in front of it, even when when there was nothing on it. Not so much these days. There is one next to my computer, not even plugged into the cable net. I use it with my laptop to watch movies, but that does not happens much anymore, either. Anyway, I spent some days in the hospital recently, and what is there to do there, when you do not really have a head to read? Well, you can watch television.
My brain still swimming against the blissful waves of highly addictive opiates pumped into my blood during surgery, I caught
something about the drug situation in Europe. The main message was that cocaine is flooding the continent in an unprecedented way. They followed that with a debate between a British politician and a Swedish politician. Many things to comment, so I'll try not to rant and rave and break down some basic points.
(1) Not having watched television for some time I found it irritating not being able to control the speed and layout of the show. I missed links to relevant information, unable to deepen my knowledge and understadning of the subject. Why do people watch TV anyway? I mean, to me it just doesn't seem very practical.
(2) Cocaine is getting bigger. It is not exotic like it was ten years ago. A major argument for legalization (at least decriminilization) of cocaine is to make it less sexy. Cocaine, a lame and boring drug that turns the nicest human being into the greediest, most moronic and monstrous douchebag imaginable, a substance in no way a part of traditional European culture in the same way as alcohol, solely has its rock n' roll buzz as selling point. When the hipsters enter that bathroom no small part of their brain actually believe they become the Ziggy Stardust that goes up their nose. It's a punk rock, Miles Davis, Al Pacino-in-a-Giorgio-Moroder-soundtrack kind of trip, which would lose much of its appeal if the powder was supplied by Apoteket (the Swedish, government controlled pharmacy). At least it would take away the initiative from the cocaine cartels completely.
If you believe
these statistics, the rock n' roll argument might also apply to cannabis. Talking with the Dutch youth while traveling through their country, I was struck with their relaxed and distinctively unromantic attitude towards the herb. In the US, the home of
the drug scare, kids seem to think that ganja is the coolest thing ever. The normal teenager samples weed before alcohol, as a part of the ritual of coming of age. And stoner culture is damn close to being the norm.
(3) The debate centered around how the drug problem should be tackled. A British politician represented the policy of
harm reduction, while Swedish politician
Sofia Modigh dismissed The Netherlands' succesful policies, claiming that drug related deaths are difficult to measure, and that statistics relating them are irrelevant. Reading the
2008 Annual report: the state of the drugs problem in Europe, issued by
The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, page 84 and onwards, you realize that determining if indeed the drug, the social situation, the mental health of the user, or something else was the lethal factor can be tricky, and that the statistics should be used with caution - but you also realize that they have tightened their policies a lot to make the data usable. In short, the figures are too reliable to be ignored, especially when page 86 shows that Sweden has twice as many people dying from drugs as The Netherlands, and that
the report from 1995 shows the figure to be ten times as high.
(4) The biggest problem with The War On Drugs is that it is a war on people. Occasional ganja puffers, if caught with the substance, are branded as criminals, parasites, (it is also ironical to see how the police always targets people in poorer areas, rather than the brats and the yuppies in the VIP). The big problem with the negative social cycles connected to being convicted of drug crimes and the social branding and isolation that follows are not taken into account, instead we get new robots repeating the same absurdities, "
a drug is a drug", "
there is no difference between weed and heroin", "
marijuana leads to heroin addiction". Instead of realizing that human beings always will want to get fucked up in the head, for one reason or the other, they dream about "
A drug free society". They should shoot for something more realistic, like perhaps... "
A dance free society".
If you use heroin you have probably tried cannabis, but that does not mean that cannabis leads to heroin use. That is not logical reasoning. If cannabis would not exist, people would still die from heroin (and school massacres would still happen even if Marilyn Manson never were born). Of course, poverty, social alienation and unemployment leads to heavy drug abuse in a much higher degree than weed. Politicians would never think of banning poverty though - especially if they are Christian Democrats like Sofia Modigh. It's easier to point the finger at weed smokers (and
muslims, both being traditional scapegoats of modern society. Much more than islamist ideology, poverty leads to other forms of antisocial behavior such as throwing rocks on fire trucks. It is no coincidence that is always in the poorest areas that these kind of things occurs,
as noted by Skumrask).
It is the worst kind of political correctness, more concerned with maintaining a shiny social façade than with human lives. It is not even funny. What is funny is that I am doing these 14-hour shifts wiping shit so I can pay
her salary. That is black comedy.
(5) Swedes, especially politicians, tend to think that what is Swedish is superior. Not just with their PC, moralist, contra-productive drug policies that they seek to export to the rest of the European Union. We might also talk about an education system and a job market unable to assimilate the competence of educated immigrants. The Swedish system is going straight down the toilet. The Swedish ideology of tolerance and openness is painted upon one of the most close minded peoples of the world, upon a reality hidden from mainstream media but clearly felt by any foreigner trying to make her way into the Swedish society. Prejudice and discrimination are not evil ideas that needs to be "debated" and "enlightened" away, they have their roots in a social situation, in economics. Integrating peoples from all parts of the world into the Swedish monoculture is not an easy job, especially in this climate of ever more aggressive capitalism. All this liberal and left wing uptight political correctness is just in the way of real improvements. If you are afraid to offend people, how can you then tell the truth? And if we can't talk openly, how can we then make things better?
"This fucking Swedish people, so afraid of change,
terrifed of everything beyond their little frame
(...)
bullied by the Jantelag and fake communism.
Therefore I rather take risks and end up in prison,
than to get lost and swallowed by a socialistic system"
