CrisPDuk

I've just finished reading Tom Clancy's Executive Orders', & within the general plot is a novel & I think quite clever method of sorting the Class A drug 'problem'.

Apparently, the vast majority of class A drugs, especially cocaine, are taken recreationally by people the middle/upper classes & celebrities who think it's a cool thing to do (cocaine has always had the image of 'designer drug'). The solution, as Tom Clancy ses it, is to come down hard on these 'social users' by prosecuting them & sentencing them to real community service i.e, get them to do all the sh!tty jobs that they generally struggle to find people to do. And if it's a 'celebrity', like say Angus Deayton, or Daniella Westbrook or some pointless non-entitiy like Tara/Tamara Whoever, make sure pictures of them appear in all the national rags. Being seen up to their armpits in sh!te pulling trolleys & bikes out of canals would kind of take the glamour out it I reckon.

Market forces would take care of the rest, if there is no demand, the supply disappears.
And before all the liberal pansies start spouting all their usual bollox about drug addicts being 'victims' too, each and every one of them made a conscious decision to take the drug in the first place!

Jye

I think being shown with no septum takes the glamour out or it

cosmicchris00

Being Liam Gallagher must be a bit of a chore too

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

If you think that would work you are greatly mistaken.

Brendan Hughes

Fiction is a great thing, isn't it? Isn't Clancy the guy who wrote about one man solving a nuclear missile standoff, bargaining for US takeover of a secret Soviet sub, saving the life of Charles and Di, being personally targetted by an IRA cell on US soil, etc etc?

More seriously; I've always liked the idea of community service rather than jail - vandals cleaning off graffiti, muggers washing bedpans in old people's homes - but from what I understand it is poorly enforced as is.

And the newspapers rely on celebs to phone them up to stage "exclusive spy" shots so they can sell more, I don't see they'd want to bite the hand that feeds them like that. Could be wrong, it's true that some get savaged by the press (Barrymore etc).

Publishing photos of criminals doing their punishment would probably fall foul of some human rights legislation, and I'll guess that would include the US constitution.

Clancy's argument erroneously is based on the glamour of drugs. That's only a small part, so it would only solve a small part. Nice try, but based on a minimal understanding of the situation.

MJW

I suppose Clancy was right insofar as the economic element of the drug problem should be addressed, but he's way off the mark targetting the demand and not the supply. The police already have way too much on their plates tracking down the people involved in the supply chain, let alone the exponential amount of users : if one dealer supplies 20 people thats a hell of a lot more bodies in holding cells, court cases,etc.
A completely unworkable solution in the real world, much like the rest of Clancy's writing !

RichWalk

....... film Tom Cruise 'nuking' South America- be a fair start to solving the problem

STi VII

You have to look at all the causal factors and then try to address these otherwise you are just displacing societies ills.
If the real reasons for people using drugs are not adequately addressed the negative behaviour that is created by drug use would just be replaced with another form of negative behaviour.
Without the ability to mask unhappiness there would be a lot more people in asylums.
It is easier for politicians to allow society to continue to use drugs than to try and stop the reasons for the drug use in the first place.

Leslie

Maybe a really effective and positive campaign of education at school level of younger children so that they are in no doubt about the dreadful long term effects of the use of drugs might put them off in the first place.

Les