TBH I don’t see any great positives here. the guy may have quit two weeks but still passed the impact of his drug use onto a lot of other people, including beating an innocent customer of his employers and causing them reputational damage (I personally wouldn’t drink in a pub what employs drug addicts who attack paying customers and I am of otherwise unashamedly left wing/tolerant views with regard to drugs use, and anti-prohibition.
no one forces folk to take large amounts of drugs. OK there is sometimes peer pressure but we are all supposed to have learned from the mistakes of the 80s and 90s, and like it or not the new generation cannot afford to repeat them – they simply do not and will not have the surplus of resources and economic good times our generation benefited from.
The argument against prohibition is that personal drug use is usually a victimless crime.
in most cases that is correct but not in this one, there have been many other victims. TBH being judged by a peer (poly) is minor stuff when his former employers would have every right to report him the Police and report a drug-related crime of violence. The addict to be fair would only have got a Caution and possibly a referral to a drug treatment centre but wasn’t that exactly the “tough love” Pat (and many others) advocate? Sometimes “friendly non judgemental advice from peers” doesn’t work and the strong hand of authority needs to be used. even in a world with decrim/no prohibition we’d need controls against anti-social behaviour whilst under the influence.
also I lived for many years in the same part of the UK as Poly and friends now live in and though being arrested a few times for drugs was annoying, in hindsight TVP were “firm but fair” and given that they still had to enforce the laws as shown on the statute books, had surprisingly enlightened discussions with me over my (personal) drug use and its wider impact on society and the risks to my health and burdens to other organisations such as the NHS.
BTW my extended family come from a country (Malaysia) which has moved from the death penalty for drug users to “tough love” for small time users.
The death penalty was becoming impractical due to the large number of otherwise harmless middle class users (it would be utterly stupid to kill your up and coming generations especially when emigration to Western countries is at a high level) but at the same time they couldn’t just let drug users do as they please and damage a country’s stability and economy (this year they have removed some harsh social control laws and introduced minimum wage as the country is doing well in spite of the economic depression.
worth also knowing there is a significant number of folk in the UK who would support decrim/tolerance provided users can behave in a reasonable manner (i.e holding down a job properly, not behaving badly…) – these are the older middle class folk who grew up in the 60s to 80s , who work full time or are retired with significant assets (houses etc) and thus have the real power in the UK.
