A very powerful and truthful reflection on the deliberate devastation of our youth.
I think most people feel they're being conspiracy theorists for articulating their fears that money is behind the algorithms and liberation of drugs and other harms, like teaching children they can change sex.
Your essay makes it clear that it isn't a conspiracy theory, its an awakening.
Wow! Screens and drugs are stealing our children and wreaking havoc on families. Permissiveness and distracted parenting enable the runaway train of self-destruction.
My sister has been trying to support her son since his drug addiction began almost 20 years ago. At a certain point, especially once they reach adulthood, it’s out of the parents’s hands. The best advice she received from JACS is to practice Radical Acceptance.
In any case I fully agree with your basic premise that the current culture is harming children and I also address this in the (graduated to a) series I'm working on.
I'm writing a post on this that's been brewing for months - I don't disagree with your basic premise - but I don't have any children (as the old joke goes, that I know of) to worry about. However. If there's anything our misbegotten policies have shown us over the years, it's that Prohibition has failed. Is failing. Will. Continue. To. Fail.
So the kids you speak of who succumb to the algorithms and potencies you mention almost invariably end up graduating to harder drugs in an effort to chase higher and higher highs. They end up hooked on methamphetamine or fentanyl that isn't even fentanyl anymore. What the street calls "down" is now an insane cocktail of benzodiazepines, alpha-2 adrenergic agonists, and opioids often last - thrown in as an afterthought just so a dealer can still call it fentanyl - and this is what Prohibition has brought us. An overdose just waiting to happen.
This is what happened in the 30s when alcohol was briefly illegal. People died or were struck blind by bathtub gin cooked up by gangsters with no real idea what they were doing. It's happening again - in BC we lose 6-7 people to toxic drugs every day. We need to end our flirtation with Prohibition - she does not have our best interests at heart - instead she only benefits law enforcement and kills our young. We need to give drug addicts prescriptions for what they need, eliminate the cartels and criminals from their role in poisoning our people, and let drug addicts stabilize their lives so they can quit in safety security and stability.
I'm not any kind of woke lefty if that's what you mean. I think people who commit violent crimes should do the time. But folks who sell drugs just to fund their own - or worse, someone else's - addiction, oftentimes end up being unfairly treated by a failed policy. And people shouldn't have to lie cheat and steal all day just because they got hooked on impossibly strong street drugs. Firefighters and paramedics shouldn't have to burn out because they Narcan the same people all day every day. There is a solution but it requires a radical rethinking of our current nonsensical policies.
I know u have a terrible situation with fentanyl, and bc seems to have let money laundering and criminality run amok. But legalizing fentanyl would help no one. Safer supply has not worked.
Safer supply hasn't worked because it hasn't been implemented properly. You can't treat addiction to fentanyl with hydromorphone, let alone whatever else is in the supply these days - and I know better than most because I operate a spectrometer on the front lines - and the only answer at this point is a radical rethinking of our societal addiction to propping up the shambling corpse of Prohibition. All we're doing is scheduling the old substances so they're hard to get, and the supply adjusts, pivots to a new substance that's even stronger and has worse side effects, and on it goes. And we pick up the tab, by way of paying for nonstop OD response and drug related property crime. Doing the same thing and expecting different results. I think that's a definition of something, can't think what...
So am I. People need to be stabilized on their actual drug of choice rather than trying to quit at rock bottom, getting clean at rock bottom, then... relapsing because they have nothing to look forward to. Guardrails are front of necessity in this process though.
A very powerful and truthful reflection on the deliberate devastation of our youth.
I think most people feel they're being conspiracy theorists for articulating their fears that money is behind the algorithms and liberation of drugs and other harms, like teaching children they can change sex.
Your essay makes it clear that it isn't a conspiracy theory, its an awakening.
Wow! Brilliant expose! Thank you, @PaulFinlayson.... kol ha'kavod!
Wow! Screens and drugs are stealing our children and wreaking havoc on families. Permissiveness and distracted parenting enable the runaway train of self-destruction.
Pray for my son.
My sister has been trying to support her son since his drug addiction began almost 20 years ago. At a certain point, especially once they reach adulthood, it’s out of the parents’s hands. The best advice she received from JACS is to practice Radical Acceptance.
Painful but true.
I’m no expert but it’s not infrequent that an underlying, undiagnosed mental health condition predisposes some kids to drug addiction.
Totally. Genetics changes suseptability
What an insightful and compelling piece!
In any case I fully agree with your basic premise that the current culture is harming children and I also address this in the (graduated to a) series I'm working on.
I'm writing a post on this that's been brewing for months - I don't disagree with your basic premise - but I don't have any children (as the old joke goes, that I know of) to worry about. However. If there's anything our misbegotten policies have shown us over the years, it's that Prohibition has failed. Is failing. Will. Continue. To. Fail.
So the kids you speak of who succumb to the algorithms and potencies you mention almost invariably end up graduating to harder drugs in an effort to chase higher and higher highs. They end up hooked on methamphetamine or fentanyl that isn't even fentanyl anymore. What the street calls "down" is now an insane cocktail of benzodiazepines, alpha-2 adrenergic agonists, and opioids often last - thrown in as an afterthought just so a dealer can still call it fentanyl - and this is what Prohibition has brought us. An overdose just waiting to happen.
This is what happened in the 30s when alcohol was briefly illegal. People died or were struck blind by bathtub gin cooked up by gangsters with no real idea what they were doing. It's happening again - in BC we lose 6-7 people to toxic drugs every day. We need to end our flirtation with Prohibition - she does not have our best interests at heart - instead she only benefits law enforcement and kills our young. We need to give drug addicts prescriptions for what they need, eliminate the cartels and criminals from their role in poisoning our people, and let drug addicts stabilize their lives so they can quit in safety security and stability.
Longer article coming soon.
Do you believe in rehabilitation or the current version?
I'm not any kind of woke lefty if that's what you mean. I think people who commit violent crimes should do the time. But folks who sell drugs just to fund their own - or worse, someone else's - addiction, oftentimes end up being unfairly treated by a failed policy. And people shouldn't have to lie cheat and steal all day just because they got hooked on impossibly strong street drugs. Firefighters and paramedics shouldn't have to burn out because they Narcan the same people all day every day. There is a solution but it requires a radical rethinking of our current nonsensical policies.
I know u have a terrible situation with fentanyl, and bc seems to have let money laundering and criminality run amok. But legalizing fentanyl would help no one. Safer supply has not worked.
Safer supply hasn't worked because it hasn't been implemented properly. You can't treat addiction to fentanyl with hydromorphone, let alone whatever else is in the supply these days - and I know better than most because I operate a spectrometer on the front lines - and the only answer at this point is a radical rethinking of our societal addiction to propping up the shambling corpse of Prohibition. All we're doing is scheduling the old substances so they're hard to get, and the supply adjusts, pivots to a new substance that's even stronger and has worse side effects, and on it goes. And we pick up the tab, by way of paying for nonstop OD response and drug related property crime. Doing the same thing and expecting different results. I think that's a definition of something, can't think what...
I don’t think gaming addicts end up on meth. I’m talking guardrails - more a cigarette model.
So am I. People need to be stabilized on their actual drug of choice rather than trying to quit at rock bottom, getting clean at rock bottom, then... relapsing because they have nothing to look forward to. Guardrails are front of necessity in this process though.