You may be asking why our politicians are so hell-bent on fighting drug users with criminal sentences and tough laws.
And you may often wonder why the police brag on social media so often about busting people with something most of us have taken more than once, treating drug users like idiots.
You may think that because fighting the war on drugs has never worked anywhere in the world it won't work here.
But you'd be wrong.
We're different. Australians are the best kind of people in the world so we know what we're doing.
If we fight hard enough and spend enough tax payer money and get more cops and jails, then eventually we'll get the upper hand and there will be no more drugs in our community. (Except alcohol, but that doesn't count because alcohol has never caused any problems and is a big revenue raiser for the government.)
"Why send them to jail?" you may be asking. "There's even more dugs there!"
Well, by being surrounded by lots of other people who do drugs and deal drugs they're likely to learn how bad drugs are, and they'll never do drugs again. It's obvious when you think about it.
"But WHY are drugs bad?" lots of people ask. "Shouldn't I be allowed to decide what I put in my body?"
Look, on the surface it may make sense to let adults make their own decisions about what to do with their bodies. Life is short. It seems people should be allowed to enjoy their momentary existence however they choose. You're responsible enough to vote, get married, be drafted then killed in war, and have gender reassignment surgery if you want. So you may think that people should be able to choose what they consume.
But you're wrong.
You don't understand how much smarter politicians are than regular folk. They get to go to special private schools like Scotch college that cost $50,000 a year, and they come from better stock.
And by living nowhere near any poverty or any suburb that has a lot of drug users, they're more aware of how to deal with the problem.
They know what's best for us. And they've decided that alcohol gets the thumbs up, prescription anti depressants should be consumed like Minties™, but cannabis is an evil plant probably created by Satan.
"But people are still easily getting drugs despite all the money spent on fighting them!" is one popular argument against continuing the status quo.
But that's just because we haven't scared, I mean, educated the community enough yet of the consequences of drugs.
"But the current laws are what's making drug taking dangerous, because people can't test what they're taking!" I hear you say.
Pfft. If we made it safe for people to take drugs, then what would the media print each week? Everyone knows newspaper circulation is plummeting, and TV viewership is basically now just over 50s who don't have a grandchild that can set up Netflix for them. Without the scary "drugs are bad" stories, news organisations will have to come up with a different trope to get everyone tut-tutting at their screens and constantly worried about the state of the world.
Besides, meth.
That's right. Meth. I love meth. I mean, I don't love meth. I mean, the word meth is so powerful now that you can just say "meth head" and straight away a picture of a scab-riddled-zombie appears in your mind and you basically want to shoot it with a sawn-off shot gun and scream "think of the children" while running into the reassuring arms of Constable Care.
We don't even need to have a conversation about all the different drugs that are no worse than alcohol, if we just mention "meth" then talk about dugs generally. Because then we can just associate the zombie picture in your mind with all drugs and lump all those drug users onto that shelf.
What's that? You want meth use decriminalised too, and to reallocate the $1.7 billion spent fighting drugs on resources to HELP addicts who want to quit?
Gah! Crazy talk.
Look, drugs and crime are related. No one is exactly sure how much crime is because of drug use. But it seems pretty legit. I read about it in The West™ once. So if we want people to stop breaking into our homes we have to make drugs hard to get and expensive so they can't afford them and have to ... wait...
"But Portugal decriminalised all drug use and crime actually dropped! Even drug use declined."
Rubbish. Just because all the statistics about Portugal being so much better off since they decriminalised all the drugs are blindingly obvious, doesn't mean we want to be like Portugal.
What about being more like the USA? They have the second highest incarceration rate in the world, at 698 per 100,000 people, only behind a country you've never heard of called Seyechelles with a population of about two Geraldtons. Wouldn't you rather be like the USA where all the cool violent movies come from, rather than where Nandos comes from? When was the last time you watched a Portugese movie? Exactly. Coz they're not cool. Americans are cool.
It's not like the WA laws are unfair or anything. Here's an excerpt from lawstuff.org.au that helps young people get wise about ... law stuff. This is for WA.
"You can also get into trouble if the police catch you at a mate’s place where people are smoking cocaine or heroin. Even if you don’t smoke yourself, you could be fined up to $2,000 and/or have to go to jail for up to 2 years just for being there."
Sure, many pedeophiles get less than 2 years. But it's good to know that by being at a house where someone else does cocaine, you can go to jail for 2 years. Australia definitely has it's priorities sorted.
And if you think that's too harsh... a lot of the effort is spent catching the dealers anyway, not the users.
Which makes a lot of sense really when you think about it. If we catch all the dealers, then people won't be able to get drugs and when there's low supply, we all know what happens. That's right. People decide not to do drugs at all and just stay at home and enjoy a quiet cup of tea.
Look, people need the government to stop them from doing things that are bad. We can't be expected to make decisions for ourselves. Sure, that approach totally isn't working right now and drugs are everywhere, but we just need to raise taxes a bit more so we can afford more prisons and cops, then we'll definitely get rid of the drugs.
And a really good social media campaign will help too, because social media is trendy with the "youth", who are the ones whose drug use is on the rise.
Oh what's that you say? The only age groups that are increasing in drug use in Australia are the over 50's and over 60's according to Australian drug use stats? (Link)
Oh. Um...
Yeah, those dodgy grandparents. I knew it was them.
That recent "dob in a dealer" campaign the WA Police ran worked I think. It netted $50,000 worth of guns and drugs in Geraldton and the surrounding areas. Not sure what the breakdown was between firearms and drugs... but that has to be at least 2 or 3 days worth of drugs in the Mid West.
Look, if we don't have the constant moral panic in our community over drug use, then how will the existing political system continue to justify its existence. We can't allow individual freedom to become more important than maintaining the status quo.
I think I might celebrate getting all those drugs off the street by drinking a bottle of wine, and remind myself how much better I am than drug users.
(For the record, I don't do drugs. Except pseudoephedrine. And caffeine. And alcohol. And nicotine. And whatever those blue pills are my mate gave me that help my "stamina".)
